Our Vision
To be the ultimate catalyst in providing an enabling environment for entrepreneurs and innovators to thrive, thus promoting economic growth and job growth in Africa.
Our Mission
To create a digital ecosystem that harness the power of information, collaboration and resources, for a prosperous and proudly African economy.
Values
Purpose
The Innovation Bridge Digital Community seeks to be a not-for-profit open innovation platform that brings entrepreneurship ecosystem stakeholders together for the benefit of innovators and entrepreneurs. It seeks to promote collaboration amongst public and private ecosystem stakeholders, to become that “one-stop shop” repository of information, opportunity, and network connection to help entrepreneurs and innovators along their journey. The digital community wishes to create a pathway for all African entrepreneurs and innovators to effectively realise their vision.
Why You Should Join Our Ecosystem
It is true that a lot of complexity exists for aspiring and established entrepreneurs, when trying to navigate countless environments to get to that desired destination for growth, connection, and learning. This intense journey seems to take a lifetime and, often leaves the entrepreneur confused and out of pocket. The Innovation Bridge Portal Entrepreneur Community is in essence uniting the stars of the entrepreneurial cosmos to ease and shorten the journey of entrepreneurs.
By applying step-by-step roadmap software, the entrepreneur will be guided through the tricky path, from considering their idea or business concept, all the way to releasing their products/services into the market and growing their business. During this journey, we will bring all the relevant ecosystem players to the attention of the entrepreneur and, ensure that they can access the precise support, investment, mentoring, opportunities etc. that they may need.
Even though the journey of an innovator or researcher can be very thrilling, it takes much perseverance and consistent accurate decision-making to achieve the dream. Innovators, especially those operating from within universities, have noted the effort required to access proper market intelligence and end user inputs that will align innovations to existing needs/problems. In addition, accessing commercial partners that have an appetite for publicly funded intellectual property, is similarly presenting a problem.
The Innovation Bridge Portal Innovator Community is wanting to facilitate access to market for innovators and researchers, by creating a mechanism by which they can interact with entrepreneurs, investors, and business. These interactions are crucial to ensure early vetting of ideas/concepts or designs that will enforce a solid commercialization opportunity or solve a real community need/problem. Additionally, we’ve realized the need for instructing important role-players, especially business, on how to navigate and streamline the licensing or buying Government owned intellectual property.
Finding a pipeline of quality ventures that are investment ready, can be a tricky and time-consuming process for investors. The Innovation Bridge Portal Investor Community aims to provide investors with the opportunity to be matched to suitable and vetted start-ups and innovations. Numerous initiatives will be applied to ensure suitability and readiness of these ventures and innovations such as pitch days, sponsored mentorships and coaches, compliance assistance, matchmaking and introduction to relevant stakeholders, to name but a few.
The Innovation Bridge Portal Ecosystem Support Community team intend to assist business support services to be found by their patrons, as well as advertise their special offers, opportunities, challenges, and events. The aim is to educate the entrepreneur and innovator on how support provider offerings could be of benefit to them and, connecting them with providers that can help them along their journey.
Our African Footprint
We dream of becoming a dynamic enabler, opening a door into the vibrant repertoire of African innovations, entrepreneurs, and opportunities, showcasing to the world the continents budding ingenuity.
Click here to register and add your country to our map.
Our Partners
The Innovation Bridge Portal, an initiative of the Department of Science and Innovation, supported by the World Bank Group, and the Department of Small Business Development