January 19th, 2024 – (Kigali, Rwanda) – In a significant stride towards building a global community through mentoring, collaborating, and supporting other hubs within Africa’s evolving ecosystem, the CcHUB Design Lab Kigali has opened its doors to four delegates from Ennovate Lab, Ogbomoso in Nigeria for the upcoming learning expedition.
Establishing a key link between these two innovative hubs, the learning expedition will serve as a platform for entrepreneurs, innovators, and key ecosystem players to connect, explore the design lab, and local market, understand business support structures, and identify opportunities for business growth and innovation in Rwanda. For the next three weeks, the Ennovate Lab team will explore a dynamic experience of knowledge exchange, networking opportunities, field visits, and collaboration with the vibrant community at CcHUB Design Lab Kigali.
Ennovate Lab’s mission is to decentralize and democratize access to opportunity and resources in underserved communities by leveraging assets within those communities, especially their human capital and the presence of university institutions. “We are extremely happy to welcome the team from Ennovate Lab Nigeria and we hope the learning visit will be beneficial for both organizations,” said Oluwaseun ADEPOJU, Managing Partner, CcHUB.
As the Ennovate Lab team embarks on this experience, our primary goal extends beyond mere exploration and networking, the experience gained over the next three weeks is envisioned to be seamlessly incorporated into Ennovate Lab’s impact strategy, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, collaboration, and innovation. The interactions with entrepreneurs, innovators, and key ecosystem players during the expedition will facilitate a robust exchange of ideas and practices, actively engaging in discussions, workshops, and collaborative sessions to assimilate new perspectives and insights.
“Collaborations of this kind have the capacity to create so much tangible and intangible good that I am in excited anticipation of the outcomes of the 3-week visit. Africa will be the better for it and I believe this will mark an inflection point in our continent’s history,” said Jesudamilare Adesegun-David, Co-founder and CEO of Ennovate Lab.
We are excited to welcome Funto Adesola, the Communications Lead, also co-founder of Cogneasy; Olajide Ajibade, the Design Lead, also co-founder of GradePlus Africa; Tolu Obatunde, Co-founder of GradePlus Africa, and Ola Okegbemi, the Software Development Team Lead from the Ennovate Lab Team for the current Rwanda learning expedition.
For additional details on Ennovate Lab’s initiatives and impact, please visit their website at https://ennovatelab.com/
About Co-Creation Hub
Co-creation Hub is Africa’s leading technology innovation ecosystem builder on a mission to accelerate the application of science, technology, and social capital for economic prosperity across Africa. In 2010, we started out as Nigeria’s premier innovation center dedicated to accelerating the application of social capital and technology for economic prosperity in Nigeria. We have since grown our physical presence to six cities (Lagos (Nigeria), Abuja (Nigeria), Ijebu-Ode (Nigeria), Kigali (Rwanda), Nairobi (Kenya), and Windhoek (Namibia)) across Africa and we work closely with stakeholders – including entrepreneurs, civil society organizations, government and private sector to identify and nurture novel solutions to social challenges in Africa
Our mandate is to build a formidable innovation ecosystem with a deeply rooted network, cultivating strategic partnerships and practical industry know-how that can support entrepreneurs and innovators in building thoughtful, relevant, and scalable solutions.
About Ennovate Lab
Ennovate Lab is an innovation hub with a mission to transform Africa’s underserved university towns into flourishing innovation ecosystems through tech, entrepreneurship, and placemaking.
Our work is premised on the following: Marginalized communities are crucial to Africa’s prosperity. However, most secondary cities and towns in Africa lack any compelling vision for community transformation that captures the imagination of their residents. These underserved communities need visionary leadership anchored to place over long periods of time to not only paint vivid pictures of what’s possible but to lead the way. The presence of universities/HEIs is a largely untapped gamechanger in these underserved communities as they can serve as ground zeroes for innovation that unlock shared prosperity for all. We are committed to bringing these non-negotiable but disparate factors together to herald a new wave of growth and development in Africa’s marginalized communities.
Ogbomoso, our prototype community, has given us the opportunity to work with the LAUTECH University Community, student entrepreneurs, and grassroots talents while reaching other underserved university communities like Oyo, Epe, Ilishan Remo amongst others. Since our inception in 2017, we have trained about 3,000+ individuals in digital, tech, and cognitive skills, offered 12,000+ secondary school students mentorship and scholarship opportunities, incubated, supported and mentored 150+ startups and entrepreneurs and convened the Ogbomoso Digital Economy Summit for 1500 economic stakeholders in the community over two years.
