Denis Opudo
There is a call for more women to take active roles in science and technology sectors in Africa and globally. The female gender faces a lot of barriers ranging from cultural, financial, education, education, systemic barriers among others. The most worldwide female impediment is gender inequality especially in the industrial and technological fields dominated by male counterparts. The FemBioBiz Acceleration Programme is one of the women empowerment initiatives launched last year. The goal of the programme is to support female in the bioscience space in SADC. The initiative so far has managed to raise about R5 million funds for 2018 round. There is the possibility of increasing fund capacity to a huge sum after negotiation to add more sponsors will be completed. NEPAD Southern Africa Network for Biosciences (SANBio) together with the BioFISA II and Finnish-South African Partnership Programme jointly founded the programme.
According to the SANBio report, more than 156 applications to join the programme were received in 2017. There were also six rounds of programme carried out in Malawi, South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The concurrent workshops took place on May 25 and June 28 last year. The topmost entrepreneurs received between R100 000 and R250 000 grant funds to help in boosting their businesses. Besides grants, they also secured trip opportunity to attend the Slush 2017 event in Finland from 30 November – 1 December 2017.
SANBio Network Manager, Dr. Ereck Chakauya, noted that this year programme will target women enterprises in health and nutrition. He added that the programme normally carries out business and technological discipline training. The initiative is planning to start a research institution to aid in backing up the innovative ideas in the SADC region.
This year’s FemBioBiz Acceleration Programme will take place in South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Seychelles, Botswana, and Malawi. The programme invites all interested participants from 13 member state countries to start applying now.
