The entrepreneurship education organization, accelerator and incubator based in downtown Miami will partner with two Tanzanian organizations to launch an education program that will help students at five Tanzanian universities start real businesses while they are still in school, said Susan Amat at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Moscow, where she was speaking.
The initiative, launched in collaboration with the Tanzania Commission for Science & Technology and the Dar Teknohama Business Incubator, was formed through the LIONS@FRiCA alliance, which works to enhance the startup and innovation ecosystems of African economies. The program will be available to tens of thousands of students in universities located in Tanzania’s capital of Dar Es Salaam with future plans to replicate the model across the country, the organizations said.
Participating universities will have access to the Venture Hive U educational web portal and a full suite of experiential learning tools to support student entrepreneurs.
Student entrepreneurs will also be able to network through the Venture Hive U portal to identify business partners and key allies and share best practices. “It will teach students to think like capitalists in a broad way, in terms of global solutions rather than just solutions for their local community,” said Amat.
In the past year, Venture Hive has trained entrepreneurs from more than 25 countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America. For example, recently Venture Hive hosted Caribbean and Latin American entrepreneurs taking part in a weeklong workshop and later a pitch competition finale as part of the U.S. State Department's La idEA program. Through the trainings, entrepreneurs are linked with potential collaboration partners and mentors across the globe.
This is one of a series of international expansions that Venture Hive U is developing with partners around the world, particularly in emerging markets. The global Hive network will also help Venture Hive entrepreneurs in Miami with their emerging markets strategies. About 35 companies are based at Venture Hive, and its second accelerator class began in January.
