Nine FIRE Grant/Award winners are on their way to Pointe Noire, Congo to take part in the FIRE Africa Workshop on Business Development Knowledge & Skills (Part 2). Held during the AFRINIC-23 Meeting, taking place from 28 November-4 December, the workshop will equip the participants with knowledge about finance, accounting, corporate structures, funding sources and the financial reporting required for the FIRE Africa programme.

The following FIRE Africa Grant and Award winners will take part:

• Ian Mutamiri, University of Zimbabwe, Harare - Zimbabwe
  • 2013 FIRE Africa Grant Winner: The Shona E-Reader/MyNatiV App.
    
    
• Jayson Johannes, CommuniNet Ltd, Cape Town – South Africa
  • 2013 FIRE Africa Grant Winner: Uplifting the Community through technology.
    
    
• Isaya Opondo, Synergy Informatics Ltd, Nairobi – Kenya
  • 2013 FIRE Africa Grant Winner: Integrated Management System for Continuous Medical Education.
    
    
• Bernard Adongo, Nikohapa Ventures Ltd, Nairobi – Kenya
  • 2013 FIRE Africa Award Winner: Nikohapa Customer Engagement Platform.
    
    
• Idriss Martial Monthe, Cintecore Ltd, Abidjan – Cote d’Ivoire:
  • 2013 FIRE Africa Award Winner: Platform for the promotion, management and sale of African ccTLDs via mobile payment.
    
    
• Amos WUSSAH, Farmerline Ltd, Accra – Ghana
  • 2014 FIRE Africa Grant Winner: Farmerline.org - Mobile technology platform to provide relevant and timely agricultural information to farmers.
    
    
• Bruno Souop Soufo, Novazen Ltd, Yaounde, Cameroon
  • 2014 FIRE Africa Grant Winner: Taximobile - Platform linking taxi users and drivers in Yaounde, Cameroon.
    
    
• Majdi Calboussi, Tunisia Ecotourism Network, Tunis, Tunisia
  • 2014 FIRE Africa Grant Winner: SmartEco - An online store offering various ecotourism products in Tunisia.
    
    
• Jean Delmas EHUI, ICTD4DEV.ci, Abidjan – Cote d’Ivoire
  • 2014 FIRE Africa Award Winner: Lôr Bouôr - an integrated platform that links Ivorian agricultural stakeholders.

Capacity Building
Workshops like these are just one of the ways that FIRE Africa contributes to capacity building throughout Africa. Workshop participants learn new skills that help them refine, expand and develop their ICT projects. They are then actively encouraged to share their knowledge and lessons-learned in their local communities so that others can also benefit. Part 1 of this workshop was held in 2014 during the Africa Internet Summit (AIS)/AFRINIC-21 Meeting and participants were trained in marketing and sales. Jayson Johannes, South Africa, Fire Grant winner 2013, attended the FIRE Africa Workshop on Business Development Knowledge & Skills (Part 1) in Tunis, Tunisa, June 2015 and says:

"Our trainer managed to squeeze in a quick lesson on finance, which was most useful; it helped us understand its importance and how to interpret information properly to maintain financial success in our businesses. I’ve already started to implement the lessons learnt in Tunis into my businesses back home.”

About FIRE Africa
FIRE Africa provides funds for projects, initiatives, tools and platforms that harness the power of the Internet to empower the local and regional community to solve the region’s unique online communications problems. Since we ran our pilot project in 2007 to identify innovative ICT solutions to the challenges faced by local communities, FIRE Africa has grown into a fully-fledged programme that has helped over 30 initiatives in 16 countries over the last eight years.