These Hands Partners Letshego To Mentor Youth Innovators

Pauline Dikuelo | Monday August 10, 2020 12:50

 

These Hands Partners Letshego To Mentor Youth Innovators

The partnership will see Letshego facilitating a grant that These Hands was awarded by the Southern Africa Innovation Support (SAIS) for the IDIN-SADC (International Development Innovation Network – SADC). 

The pan African micro-lender will grant  ‘These Hands’ over P1.7 million in bridging finance to fund and facilitate the training and mentoring of local youth innovators who develop low-cost technologies for the benefit of rural communities.

Letshego Botswana chief executive officer, Fergus Ferguson said These Hands changes the lives of local community members by identifying and supporting home-grown innovations that make a difference to everyday life.

“Our objective is to help useful innovations get the funding, the mentorship and the financial support needed to help, not only the inventors but also other members of the community who can also gain from local innovations,” he said. 

IDIN-SADC is a regional consortium led by an Executive Committee (EC) for grassroots innovation ecosystem builders around SADC. In Botswana, SAIS programme is administered by BIH. 

For his part, BIH CEO Allan Boshwaen said as a country focal point for the SAIS Programme, BIH facilitated a SAIS Call for Proposals for the IDIN-SADC project that promote SADC relations between member countries; Botswana, Zambia Namibia and Tanzania by running innovation centres, running innovator exchanges, sharing lessons,  training of trainers, and providing each other technical advice and support for projects commercialization. 

“These Hands Social Enterprise was successful in the SAIS Call for Proposal and was awarded an opportunity to administer the overall consortium grant of 138 565 Euros and be lead project coordinator,” Boshwaen said. 

These Hands will implement activities in Botswana as per an agreement with the IDIN SADC Executive Committee.

“It is pleasing to see a member company such as These Hands Social Enterprise grow through the BIH incubation structures to being capable of managing a grant of this magnitude. The partnership will not only benefit These Hands Social Enterprise but more social innovators in SADC. BIH will monitor and account for the successful implementation of the project,”  Boshwaen added. 

The Southern Africa Innovation Support Programme (SAIS 2) is a regional initiative that supports the growth of new businesses through strengthening innovation ecosystems and promotion of cross-border collaboration between innovation role-players in Southern Africa.  

SAIS 2 is supported by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Finland, in partnership with the Ministries responsible for Science, Technology and Innovation of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia, and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat.