Building an Inclusive Future: The Africa Makerspace Network

Building an Inclusive Future: The Africa Makerspace Network

By Ricardo Ruiz Comment Closed
In recent years, makerspaces have emerged as a powerful force for innovation and community building in cities worldwide. These shared workspaces provide access to tools, technology, and resources often out of reach for individuals and small organizations. They also serve as a hub for collaboration, experimentation, and skill-sharing. But while the benefits of makerspaces are clear, they are not equally accessible to everyone. In many parts of the world, makerspaces are concentrated in urban areas and are often dominated by privileged groups. This creates a significant barrier for individuals and communities who need more resources or connections to access these spaces. The Africa Makerspace Network (AMN) is working to change this. AMN is a network of makerspaces and innovation hubs across Africa committed to creating inclusive spaces for innovation, learning, and entrepreneurship. Their mission is to build a network of African makerspaces that are accessible and sustainable and connect them with the global maker movement. AMN was founded in 2019 by a...
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Sailing on Knowledge Waves

Sailing on Knowledge Waves

By Ricardo Ruiz Comment Closed
In 2014, Nave à Vela - a start-up co-founded by GIG member Miguel Chaves in Brazil - has the purpose of, in partnership with schools, building a more meaningful education, promoting increasingly innovative teaching, and respecting the particularities and reality of each school. The mission is to transform schools into places where students' creativity and curiosity awake. They develop activities encouraging them to build knowledge through practices, projects and even life purposes. The Curricular Base for Innovation Culture: a methodology fostering student's development. Nave à Vela (NAV) respects the needs of each school and its particularities. For this reason, it developed an adaptable methodology to fit each school's needs: the Curricular Base for a Culture of Innovation. Designed for kindergarten, elementary school and high school students, it promotes maker learning, in which the student learns by building toys and prototypes and authoring projects. In this process, he starts to have a more exploratory relationship with knowledge and, thus, develops his autonomy. By becoming...
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Join the HerMeNow Accelerator program

Join the HerMeNow Accelerator program

By Mugethi Gitau Comment Closed
Are you a women led social enterprise in MENA or Africa? Join the HerMeNow Accelerator program to grow your social enterprise and increase your impact.  Designed for women-led social enterprises focusing on building impactful solutions in culture, mindset, and education, this 5 month program is almost entirely remote and online and so accessible to companies across MENA + Africa (including Armenia). The Accelerator will support 10 women-led social enterprises. The accelerator is hosted by Bloom, an organization co-founded by 2 of our members, Bilal Ghalib and David Munir Nabti, that helps entrepreneurs grow and build skills for thriving people, communities and planet, in collaboration with the Stardust Concept ESG and Impact Division. Eligibility Social Enterprises that are past the product/market fit stage and that: Already generate revenues or have considerable user and/or product tractionAre planning to expand their teamsAre economically viable in the long termAre responsible, inclusive, and social enterprisesAre based in MENA + Africa (including Armenia) Selected Teams Get: Funding to support an essential aspect of...
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Gosanitize! Go Girls ICT (South Sudan)’s response to Covid 19

Gosanitize! Go Girls ICT (South Sudan)’s response to Covid 19

By Mugethi Gitau Comment Closed
South Sudan is a country that depends entirely on imports from its neighboring countries and during the pandemic, products such as hand sanitizers became more expensive as their demand was high and not affordable to the common person in the community. GoGirls inspiration to research and come up with a hand sanitizer called Gosanitize from locally sourced resources within South Sudan was because of the above challenges. About Go Girls ICTGoGirls ICT Initiative is a Juba, South Sudan based non-profit initiative founded by a group of dedicated young women in the fields of Computer Science, Information Systems, ICT4D Innovation, hacktivism and peace-building. Ten female local brewers were trained to make highly concentrated alcohol (Ethanol) for use in the hand sanitizer. To achieve this, GoGirls ICT Initiative team together with chemistry experts, had a peer-to-peer virtual mentorship exchange with Bibliothèque-MboaLab, Cameroon. But alas! A hurdle. To enable this project to succeed, they needed to overcome a major hurdle: religious beliefs and the extent...
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Olabi innovation hub promotes a toolkit to encourage diversity in companies.

Olabi innovation hub promotes a toolkit to encourage diversity in companies.

By Ricardo Ruiz Comment Closed
The digital toolkit consists of an ebook, a podcast series, and a video manifesto aiming to clarify concepts and encourage companies to create environments of diversity in the workplace, supporting more women, LGBTQIAP+, black, indigenous and people with disability in their frames.It contains tips and guidelines on creating policies for welcoming and retaining people in the teams and the experiences and challenges of companies that experienced transformations in the workplace. Diversity is a theme that occupies more space in publicity, politicians and corporate addresses, classrooms, and journalistic guidelines each time. But how do you take real action? How do we convert themes to working policies? Include, insert and accept the broad and diverse range of people who coexist in the society, with respect and opening to welcome ideas, perspectives, and many different cultures can not be a desire but a requirement. However, it presupposes paradigms overturns not always straightforward incorporated. Olabi has extensive experience in consulting and actions to create more inclusive environments in...
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GIG presents a Masterclass at Innovate2030 Bootcamp

GIG presents a Masterclass at Innovate2030 Bootcamp

By Ricardo Ruiz Comment Closed
We are excited to announce that Geraldine de Bastion, a GIG member and co-founder, will present a Masterclass about GIG at the Innovate2030 Bootcamp on March 10th, in a day full of profound insights, learnings from the best, and crucial interactions moments.  Innovate2030 Bootcamp is the space where stakeholders, challenge-providers, collaborating partners and the Bootcamp´s finalist teams come together for the first time to get to know each other.  11 Masterclasses offer real-life insights from A-Z in climate-tech entrepreneurship and multidisciplinary and global perspectives given by experts from all over the world and various disciplines.  It is a unique opportunity to join an exceptional vision on climate-smart cities and meet the Innovate2030-finalists. The main goal is to share first-hand insights on innovation processes and glimpse Innovate 2030 bright concepts and groundbreaking ideas.  Innovate2030-SDG11 is a partnership by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (#BMZ) and its new lab for digital innovations – #digilab – in collaboration with the Make-IT Alliance. You can learn...
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#BorgaLife: Our Innovators and Migration project is coming to a close

#BorgaLife: Our Innovators and Migration project is coming to a close

By Theresa FendNo Comments
Over the course of the past six months we implemented our project “Young Innovators: Using Digital Media to inform about Regular and Irregular Migration Issues”. Together with our partner organisations Kumasi Hive, Impact Hub Accra and Wikimedia Ghana User Group and with the support of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, we aimed at improving the information base on business and knowledge exchange related travel for young Innovators. Globally about 28.2 million international migrants are aged 15 to 24 and live outside their birth country for various reasons (United Nations, 2017) and the issues of innovation, technology and migration are mentioned in 9 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), reflecting their significance in economic development and advancing people’s lives (IOM, 2018). Young people’s migration has a crucial role in fostering innovation. Their movements does not only improve their personal potential and capabilities, but contribute to creating opportunities for those around them (UN Development Program, 2009), bringing knowledge and new...
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DreamSpace Academy won the Falling Walls Science Engagement Award

DreamSpace Academy won the Falling Walls Science Engagement Award

By Zen Editor1 Comment
On Friday last week, DreamSpace Academy won the Falling Walls Science Engagement award of the year, among 81 applications from 44 countries. Falling Walls Engage is one of the largest international platforms for all forms of science engagement, co-organised by Falling Walls Foundation, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Helmholtz Association, Federal Ministry of Education and Research and many universities around the world. DreamSpace Academy is a community innovation center that tackles socio-economic and environmental challenges using project-based learning. Our mission is to empower creative minds through Maker Education, to create innovative local solutions using Open Innovation, and ultimately leading them to become successful Social Entrepreneurs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B17rJ07Ljs4 The winner of this year‘s @Falling_Walls Engage conference is „DreamSpace Academy“ from Sri Lanka! The project provides workshops for children and teenagers, encouraging them to deal with social and ecological issues using science. https://t.co/Ewl8uQ16eW #FallingWalls19 pic.twitter.com/JjYUncvr4x— RobertBosch Stiftung (@BoschStiftung) November 8, 2019 Press coverage Nov 8, 2019 – Falling Walls Engage: Award for the best project in science communication (German),...
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Edukits: Merging 3D Printing and Education

Edukits: Merging 3D Printing and Education

By Theresa FendNo Comments
‘Education is the most powerful tool that can be used to change the world’ — Nelson Mandela The Bridge the Gap training program is an ongoing initiative that was started by Kumasi Hive in partnership with GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), Innovation Factory and e- skills for Girls. The Bridge the Gap program addresses the issue of the gender gap in the technology space. The program trained 60 girls in web development and 3D printing in the first phase, which lasted for one month. We are currently implementing the second phase of the program: the business incubation and internship phase. In this cycle, 10 selected teams are being introduced to global perspectives on leadership and entrepreneurship, the world of business and design, issues that may arise in terms of user experience and how to resolve such problems. They have been provided with the tools and a makerspace where these teams are designing and building prototypes of their products. This week, we are focusing on one of the teams, Edukits,...
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African Digital Economy

African Digital Economy

By Zen EditorNo Comments
Ampion and Plutos Ventures launch new venture for Africa-focused start-ups Focus of the new venture – on site development of digital business models Call for Applications from founders and start-ups with an Africa focus start now! Nairobi & Berlin, 12.03.19 - Africa-focused Ampion and Berlin-based Plutos Ventures Holding today announced the founding of Ampion Ventures. The goal of the new project is to build scalable digital business models in selected African countries by providing seed capital and strategic expertise support. Plutos Venture provides continuous and open-ended funding to Ampion Ventures. Ampion Ventures is led by Fabian-Carlos Guhl, founder of the non-profit organization Ampion.org. Guhl has been working for years on the African continent with founders and early-stage start-ups. Through his very successful start-up bus, with which he has travelled through more than 16 African countries and coached and supported founders in the development of digital business models, Guhl has been able to build up a large network of founders and start-ups in different African countries. Together with Plutos, Ampion is now taking the next logical step to...
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