POTRAZ to expand ICT Innovation Drive

16 Oct, 2018 - 14:10 0 Views
POTRAZ to expand ICT Innovation Drive

eBusiness Weekly

Enacy Mapakame

HARARE – The Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (POTRAZ) is considering expanding its ICT Innovation Drive as part of efforts to boost entrepreneurship in the sector and enhance its contribution to the economic agenda.

The ICT Innovation Drive is a programme that promotes innovation in the sector through funding the most promising and bankable projects in ICT.

Young entrepreneurs make applications to receive funding from the telco’s regulator with the aim of growing into business and make an impact in the economy. Several

POTRAZ director general Dr Gift Machengete said the regulator was looking at expanding the project to innovation hubs, that is centres that can be used by emerging entrepreneurs where they can get incubation services.

“We also believe that Innovation hubs can provide innovators with the best possible platform to make their ideas a reality,” he said in a presentation made on his behalf by finance director Mr Biggie Chiripanhura at the ICT Innovation Drive workshop in Harare.

“We are therefore, considering identifying some existing, or establishing new innovation hubs, whose operations will be sponsored by the Innovation Drive, through paying for rentals and other utilities like electricity and water, thereby availing co-working space to more innovators,” he said.

Dr Machengete said several applications were failing to make it for the ICT Innovation Drive because they did not fall within the current structure of the Innovation Drive, which is operating as a revolving fund that assists beneficiaries by extending loans for their different projects.

Resultantly, only proposals which showed potential to repay the loan were considered for funding. This, Dr Machengete said, prompted the authority to widen its scope of the programme to increase the number of beneficiaries.

Apart from the innovation hubs, the authority was also consider reviewing the structure of the ICT Innovation Drive to include hackathons where innovators are given an opportunity to showcase their ideas, develop them into prototypes, and those with bankable prototypes are provided with seed capital, in the form of Grants, to develop their ideas further, into tangible solutions.

“We have therefore, come to the realization that there is need to consider other forms of support under the Innovation Drive.

“This way, we believe, we can increase the number of innovators benefiting from the ICT Innovation Drive, as opposed to the provision of loans which can only benefit a few,” said Dr Machengete.

POTRAZ has been working on various initiatives to empower the communities and improve their livelihoods and empower them economically through access to information.

These initiatives include the establishment of community information centres to facilitate access to information by communities via the internet as well as e-learning programmes in schools to enhance access and use of ICT products.

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