THENSA, the Technological Higher Education Network South Africa (previously SATN) and several Irish Institutes of Technology, work together on the South Africa / Ireland Entrepreneurship Programme to promote entrepreneurial thinking among young students.

• Munster Technological Univerisity (MTU) - Cork, Ireland
• Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) - Galway, Ireland
• Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) - Waterford, Ireland
• Limerick Institute of Technology (LIM) - Limerick, Ireland
• Technological University Dublin (TUDublin) - Dublin, Ireland

The partnership will deliver an online Introduction to Entrepreneurship for graduates across South Africa.

This project was designed following the vision of THENSA on the creation of a platform that encourages entrepreneurial activities in Technology Institutes and discusses matters regarding higher education. The activities include sharing best practices and successes among international partners.

This South Africa / Ireland Entrepreneurship Programme is focused on:

• Training, guiding, mentoring and providing university students with the skills necessary to develop their entrepreneurial activities and initiatives
• Developing young entrepreneurs’ ideas into implementable start-ups

Throughout a period of three years, partners will meet and organize short-term programmes and events to promote entrepreneurship and display young student's ideas.

In 2019, partners met for a five-day programme that included:

• Presentations from entrepreneurship lecturers
• Group works and challenges
• Panel discussions
• Intense workshops including ‘Train the Trainer’ workshops.

Subjects discussed in these sessions varied from ideation, market research and the Lean Canvas Methodology to creating value proposition and a favourable entrepreneurship ecosystem at Institute level.

Another event took place in Durban, South Africa to open the South Africa / Ireland research colloquium, where over eighty researchers from five different Institutes of Technology in Ireland and another ten from South Africa discussed topics such as Circular economy, agriculture and food security and Innovation Hubs and Spaces in line with the entrepreneurship concept. To read more about this, please see our News section.

This event served as a gathering to display current research activities as well as meeting colleagues with whom to collaborate with on new projects in the future. The next colloquium will present works from the newly formed research groups.

The South African and Irish teams together with business and industry partners are invited to participate, support or invest in the start-ups that develop from the students participating in the programme.

The programme is supported by the Irish Embassy in South Africa and Ireland’s THEA (Technological Higher Education Association).