The Africa Women Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum holds its twelfth annual conference and expo at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on 10 and 11 November, bringing together entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, government and development partners from across the continent.
This edition is convened in partnership with Open Society Foundations, under a theme positioning women-led enterprise as a strategy for peace and security in Africa. The organisers frame the argument around fragile and post-conflict regions, from the Sahel to the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa, where women entrepreneurs carry much of the work of restoring livelihoods and rebuilding local markets after conflict.
The forum has become one of the larger annual convenings of its kind on the continent, and its programme typically spans access to finance, market access, policy and the practical mechanics of scaling a business across African borders. For an audience of executives and board members the relevant content sits in the investor and corporate tracks, where the question is less about advocacy than about where capital is actually being deployed and on what terms.
The partnership with a major international foundation also signals the direction of travel for this part of the development finance market, in which enterprise support is increasingly framed as security policy rather than as a social programme. That reframing matters to anyone allocating capital or sitting on a board with exposure to the regions named, because it changes which institutions are at the table and which instruments are available.
The conference is held in Cape Town, South Africa.
