Almost a year ago in this column I spoke about the breathtaking levels of innovation we witnessed when the Saldanha Bay Innovation Campus hosted the DroneTech Innovation Challenge. Nine businesses pitched their drone solutions to various challenges.
Four of those – Taurus Energy, WIPO Wireless Power, RBI Drone Tech, and Delta-Scan – were selected to go through an acceleration programme in partnership with the SA Innovation Summit through the TechTribe Accelerator. The Tech-tribe Acceleration Programme started in February this year and culminated on 25 August with a graduation and Demo Day event.
This was a celebration and an opportunity for the founders to pitch their businesses to investors to raise capital to help build the next set of entrepreneurs across South Africa.
This programme shows how we continue to position the province as the tech hub of Africa by working together.
In October, another opportunity presents itself for innovative energy companies to get the attention of investors. In partnership, the Saldanha Bay Innovation Campus and RIIS, an open innovation firm working with startups, will host the Energy Investment Village alongside the Green Energy Africa Summit 2022.
This will enable a pre-selected group of clean energy tech entrepreneurs and startups to convince a group of highly influential investors that their innovative project is worth backing.
Innovation is a buzzword, sometimes overused. But it is the centre of how we approach the challenges we face. It requires constantly asking questions about why we do what we do. And when we understand why we do what we do, we can talk about how and what it will result in.
Why are we creating a Special Economic Zone? Because we believe we are going to be Africa’s premier maritime, energy and logistics free port. How we do this will be by offering a world-class integrated shipyard, engineering, fabrication, logistics, and services environment to zone users and tenants.
What we do then is to create an efficient industrial, logistical, transportation and trade area, providing a competitive advantage to those businesses operating within the free-port zone.
That is why we decided to rebrand the Saldanha Bay Industrial Development Zone as Freeport Saldanha. Not simply because we are the only special economic zone in a port with Customs Control Area status, but because we believe in why we are doing what we do.
Over the next few weeks, our website, social media and signage will be rebranded. However, rebranding will not change why we do what we do, nor will it affect our service offering. Our team remains committed to our tenants, stakeholders and partners as we continue to establish Saldanha Bay as a vibrant hub of opportunity.
