Africa-Press – South-Africa. FORGE Academy, South Africa’s first fully inclusive Fourth Industrial Revolution lab, would host a showcase for small and medium-sized tech businesses and start-ups, it said yesterday.
The event would be hosted at The Gantry in Fourways on June 30.
Forge Academy, which has partnered with Nokia and the ICT SMME Chamber, said it was offering a unique opportunity for tech small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) and tech start-ups to present their businesses to a panel of judges at the showcase event.
The top six businesses would win a place to exhibit their business and products at the Forge Academy Digital Street Festival on November 18 at Montecasino in Fourways.
For more information, go to www.forgeacademy.co.za/events.
Arthur Wade Anderson, the chief executive of Forge Academy, said: “We are on a drive to assist small and medium-sized micro-enterprises operating in the tech sector to gain exposure and to grow their businesses … The festival will offer great exposure to potential investors who may be interested in injecting some capital to accelerate their growth.”
Muzi Makhaye, the executive chairperson of the ICT SMME Chamber, said the increasing rate of unemployment, particularly among the youth, had long been one of the most pressing socio-economic problems and “should represent a dire warning to us all.
“We can ignore this warning at our own peril. More so, some young work-seekers are not sufficiently educated and do not have the skill-sets that employers and the marketplace demand. Therefore, if entrepreneurs are encouraged and supported, like with the SMME Showcase opportunity, each tech start-up can then be positioned to become successful and resolve the joblessness problem for a number of young people,” said Makhaye.
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