Africa Startup Ecosystem Builders Summit & Awards, 18 Southway Street, Eastgate, Sandton, Johannesburg (2026)

02/10/2026

SOME PEOPLE HOST AN EVENT. OTHERS BECOME PART OF ITS MEMORY.

When the Africa Startup Ecosystem Builders Summit & Awards began in Johannesburg in 2022, Nomalanga Sitole was there.

She carried the room as we recognised Africa’s often unseen ecosystem builders for the first time.

She travelled with ASEB to Nairobi in 2023 and returned in Addis Ababa in 2025. The only edition she did not host was Accra in 2024.

Now, as ASEB returns home to Johannesburg for its fifth anniversary, the voice that helped carry this journey from the beginning will be with us again.

We are honoured to welcome Nomalanga Intomb'ebalamalanga Founder of The Voice Within, as the Master of Ceremonies for the ASEB Awards Ceremony on 21 October 2026.

For more than two decades, Nomalanga has worked across broadcasting, strategic facilitation, programme direction, event leadership and storytelling. Her work has taken her across Africa and beyond, carrying important conversations and helping organisations turn gatherings into moments people remember.

She understands that hosting the ASEB Awards Ceremony is not simply about reading names from a script.

It is about understanding what those names have survived.

It is about carrying the stories of people who continued building without recognition, funding or applause.

It is about ensuring that when their moment finally arrives, it is handled with dignity.

Her focus at ASEB 2026 is:

“Carrying Africa’s Stories with Dignity.”

On the evening of 21 October, 145 finalists from 52 African countries will gather as the winners across 29 categories are announced.

Nomalanga will once again help us turn recognition into a human moment.

ASEB 2026 takes place from 20 to 22 October 2026 at Alexander Forbes in Sandton, Johannesburg.

Ticket sales close in eight days, on 10 October 2026. No tickets will be sold at the venue.

Secure your ticket now at www.asebs.com

25/09/2026

When an ecosystem enters a room that has never heard its name

Sometimes, an entire ecosystem can be building while the rest of the continent does not even know it exists.

When Mayotte In Tech attended ASEB 2024 in Accra, they arrived with a five person delegation that included three startups.

They came from an island in the Indian Ocean carrying businesses, ambitions and stories that much of the room had never encountered.

Haouthani Massoundi, Managing Director of Mayotte In Tech and Community Lead of La French Tech Mayotte, later shared something that stayed with us.

Before their participation at ASEB, approximately 98 percent of the delegates had never heard of Mayotte.

Imagine building startups, developing entrepreneurs and creating opportunities for young people, yet remaining almost invisible when the continent gathers to discuss innovation.

That is a particular kind of loneliness.

It is not the loneliness of having nothing to contribute. It is the pain of carrying something valuable that the world has not yet learned how to see.

Then Mayotte entered the ASEB room.

Through a fireside conversation and encounters that followed in corridors, over meals and during the Ecosystem Tour, Mayotte stopped being an unfamiliar name on a map.

It had faces. It had founders. It had challenges. It had possibilities.

That relationship did not end when the Accra stage was dismantled. It continued through engagement around Addis Ababa in 2025 and developed into deeper conversations about island ecosystems, the Indian Ocean and the bridges Africa must build between places separated by geography but connected by ambition.

At ASEB 2026, Mayotte In Tech will return with a larger delegation currently being prepared.

They are not coming merely to occupy seats.

They are coming to tell us what it means to build from an island that is geographically located in the Indian Ocean, politically connected to Europe and culturally tied to Africa.

They will bring the realities of founders whose greatest barriers may not be the quality of their ideas, but distance, language, mobility, market access and exclusion from the rooms where opportunities are distributed.

We are also exploring, subject to institutional readiness and formal agreement, the possibility of Mayotte becoming a future destination for ASEB.

Imagine Africa’s ecosystem builders travelling into the Indian Ocean, not to discuss island economies from a distance, but to meet their builders, experience their realities and create partnerships on their soil.

This is what inclusion must mean.

It cannot end with adding another flag to a conference photograph.

It must ensure that no builder, island, smaller country or overlooked community remains invisible simply because they began somewhere the world rarely looks.

Come and meet Haouthani Massoundi and the Mayotte In Tech delegation at ASEB 2026.

Physical seats are limited, ticket sales close 10 October 2026

Purchase Your ASEB 2026 Ticket at www.asebs.com

23/09/2026

Her visa was approved two days after the event ended.

By then, the stage had been dismantled, the delegates had returned home and the room where her name had been called was already empty.

But the story had started months earlier with an email she almost deleted.

It said she had been nominated for an ASEB Award.

She did not know ASEB. She had seen too many suspicious messages arrive with congratulations, promises and links, so her first instinct was to ignore it.

Then something told her to open it.

She saw her name.

She searched for ASEB, opened the website and began following the evidence of a platform that had travelled from one African country to another, looking for the people building quietly behind entrepreneurs.

Then she realised what the email meant.

Somebody had seen her.

Somebody had followed work she was doing without applause, without enough resources and without knowing whether anyone beyond her community understood what it had cost her to continue.

She broke down.

Recognition had reached her before permission to travel did.

She applied for her visa and waited while the event moved closer. Every passing day carried the same question: will the document arrive before the moment?

It did not.

So she watched from a distance as people entered the room she had prepared to enter.

She followed the entire event. Then her category was announced, and her name was called as the winner.

She broke down again.

Not because the Award meant less from a distance, but because it meant so much and she was not there to hold it.

That is the cruelty of a broken system. Africa speaks about integration, movement and continental opportunity, yet too many Africans still need permission to meet one another. Builders spend years creating opportunities for others, then lose their own opportunities inside visa queues, delayed decisions and systems with no understanding of what one late stamp can take away.

Her visa arrived two days later.

The system finally said yes when there was no longer a room to enter.

At ASEB 2026, she will enter that room.

She will share the story behind the email she nearly deleted, the Award she received from another country and the visa that arrived after everyone had gone home.

This is why THE MOVEMENT IS LANDING means more than an aircraft approaching Johannesburg.

It means the people whose work has remained unseen are arriving.

It means stories that were once watched through a screen will finally be told from the stage.

It means recognition must become connection, access and an institution strong enough to remember the human being behind the achievement.

ASEB 2026 takes place from 20 to 22 October at Alexander Forbes in Sandton, Johannesburg.

Physical seating is limited, and the remaining tickets will not wait for the last minute.

Purchase your physical or online ticket now:

www.asebs.com

Theme: From Movement to Institution

20/09/2026

30 DAYS TO ASEB 2026

Thirty days from today, the lights will come on at Alexander Forbes in Johannesburg.

People will see a stage, polished trophies, recognised speakers, carefully arranged seats and names being called during an Awards Ceremony.

But a stage never tells the whole story.

It will not show the founder who built an organisation from a borrowed desk because there was no institution willing to take the first risk.

It will not show the ecosystem builder who answered calls at midnight, made introductions without receiving a commission, reviewed pitch decks without being paid and used personal money to keep a programme alive because the entrepreneurs depending on it had nowhere else to go.

It will not show the mentor carrying someone else’s dream while privately questioning how much longer they can carry their own life.

It will not show the woman building while raising children, managing grief, surviving betrayal, fighting exhaustion and still entering rooms where she must prove that she belongs before anyone will listen to what she has built.

It will not show the builder in the mud.

The person creating roads where no roads exist, carrying costs produced by missing systems, building trust where institutions have failed and holding communities together inside environments that often appear designed to make progress unnecessarily difficult.

That is the story behind ASEB.

This was never simply about rewarding people who succeeded.

It is about witnessing those who kept building when the system gave them every reason to stop.

It is about recognising that behind every celebrated African founder is an entire invisible architecture of mentors, hubs, incubators, universities, policymakers, investors, researchers, service providers, community leaders and ordinary people who made the journey possible.

Some of them are exhausted.

Some are underfunded.

Some are questioning whether the work is worth the personal cost.

Some have been carrying responsibilities that should have been carried by institutions.

Yet they are still building.

In thirty days, we will not gather because Africa has finally fixed its entrepreneurial systems.

We will gather because it has not.

We will gather because ecosystem building cannot continue to depend on private sacrifice, unpaid labour, personal relationships and a few individuals who refuse to let everything collapse.

We will gather because the movement now needs an institution.

From 20 to 22 October 2026, ASEB returns to Johannesburg, the city where this journey began, for its fifth anniversary edition under the theme:

FROM MOVEMENT TO INSTITUTION

This is not an invitation to come and watch an event.

It is an invitation to sit inside the uncomfortable truth of what it takes to build in Africa, to meet the people carrying that work, to hear evidence that challenges what we think we know, and to help create systems strong enough to carry the people who have been carrying everyone else.

If you have ever built something without the support you needed, this room is for you.

If someone once opened a door, made an introduction, stayed on a call, shared knowledge or believed in you before your work became visible, this room is for them.

If you believe ecosystem building is a practice, a profession and a responsibility that deserves to be recognised, resourced and protected, you should be with us.

Thirty days remain.

Do not wait until the photographs appear to realise that you should have been in the room.

Purchase your physical or online ticket today at www.asebs.com

ASEB 2026
20 to 22 October 2026
Alexander Forbes, Sandton, Johannesburg

The movement has carried us this far. Now we must build the institution capable of carrying the movement.

18/09/2026

SOME ECOSYSTEMS ARE BUILT IN GLASS TOWERS. OTHERS BEGIN IN A CLASSROOM THAT BECOMES A LABORATORY BECAUSE A COUNTRY HAS BEEN CUT OFF FROM THE WORLD.

When COVID 19 closed South Sudan’s borders, access to essential supplies became painfully difficult.

There were no sophisticated laboratories or large research budgets. There was only a community refusing to accept that nothing could be done.

Honorable Engineer Yine Yenki and the GoGirls ICT Initiative brought together science educators, local alcohol brewers and community members to explore whether hand sanitiser could be produced using locally available materials.

Their small office and a classroom became makeshift laboratories.

They experimented, failed, documented, learned and tried again.

After years of persistence, their product was certified by the South Sudan Bureau of Standards as ready for the market.

This is what ecosystem building can look like in a country that rarely appears at the centre of Africa’s innovation conversation.

Across the continent, innovation is often presented through polished buildings, major technology centres and familiar cities. Yet some of Africa’s most important work is being built in places where resources are limited and visibility is never guaranteed.

The work is happening. The intelligence is there. The courage is there.

What is often missing is recognition and a continental conversation wide enough to include everyone.

We are honoured to announce Honorable Engineer Yine Yenki, Cofounder and Mentorship Director of GoGirls ICT Initiative, South Sudan, as a confirmed speaker at ASEB 2026.

Her speaker focus will be: “Advancing Digital Inclusion and Girls in STEM”

Yine Yenki is a computer scientist, mentor, technology leader and policy advocate with more than a decade of experience. She is the youngest person ever to serve on a national board in South Sudan and has contributed to telecommunications regulation, digital transformation, cybersecurity, data protection and national digital infrastructure development.

For GoGirls ICT Initiative, now in its eleventh year, the ASEB 2026 theme, “From Movement to Institution,” is deeply personal.

How do we build institutions that outlive their founders?

How do we ensure that young people in Juba and other overlooked places are recognised not merely as beneficiaries of innovation, but as creators of Africa’s future?

Honorable Engineer Yine Yenki is bringing South Sudan into a continental room that must learn to listen beyond the places it already knows.

Because inclusion is not inviting people into the conversation after every important decision has been made.

Inclusion is recognising that the conversation was incomplete without them.

Purchase your ticket at www.asebs.com and come listen to this incredible woman in Johannesburg.

Virtual tickets are also available for those joining from anywhere in Africa and beyond.

📅 20 to 22 October 2026

📍 Alexander Forbes, Sandton, Johannesburg

🎟️ www.asebs.com

16/09/2026

THESE WERE NOT CLICKS. THEY WERE ACTS OF BELIEF.

Voting for the Africa Startup Ecosystem Builders Awards 2026 has officially closed.

21,422 votes were submitted.
19,683 were verified.
72 countries participated.
All 54 African countries were represented.

This is the largest public voting response we have ever received.

And it was not a simple click.

Our system permitted one vote per email address. Every voter had to register, receive a verification code by email, return to the platform and use that code before the vote could be verified.

There were several moments when they could have abandoned the process. But 19,683 times, someone completed it.

They took the time because they knew who they were voting for. They believed in the work because they had seen it, felt it or experienced what it made possible.

Someone remembered the person who answered when their business was collapsing.

Someone remembered the mentor who stayed after the programme ended.

Someone remembered the organisation that helped them register a company, prepare for an investor or enter a market that once felt unreachable.

Someone remembered the person who made the introduction but disappeared from the photograph when the partnership was announced.

This is where much of Africa’s ecosystem building evidence lives.

It lives in the memory of a founder who remembers who opened the first door. It lives in a young person who received a first opportunity. It lives in a community that finally had somewhere to take an idea.

Africa has consumed the labour of ecosystem builders for years without properly accounting for its cost.

Their relationships become somebody else’s partnership. Their credibility becomes somebody else’s access. Their unpaid hours become somebody else’s successful programme. Their introductions become investment announcements. Yet their names often disappear once the outcome becomes valuable.

That is why these 19,683 verified votes matter.

Each vote required time, intention and a verified email address. Each one left a trail of belief.

It said, “I know this person.”

It said, “I have seen this work.”

It said, “Our community has felt the difference.”

To every voter, thank you.

To every finalist, whether you receive an award or not, someone believed your work was worth registering, verifying and returning to vote for.

Now we must meet.

From 20 to 22 October 2026, ASEB 2026 will gather researchers, policymakers, investors, support organisations, founders and ecosystem builders at Alexander Forbes in Sandton, Johannesburg.

Dr Phumlani Nkontwana of the Allan Gray Centre for Africa Entrepreneurship will present three years of research into South Africa’s provincial entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Professor Erik Stam of Utrecht University will challenge us to move from ecosystem language to ecosystem evidence.

i4Policy will help connect that evidence to institutional and policy change across Africa.

Hon. Engineer Yine Nyika Yenki of South Sudan will bring the lived reality of technology leadership, digital inclusion and building from communities that mainstream innovation conversations frequently overlook.

More speakers and programme contributors will be announced.

The programme will also include an ecosystem tour designed as an experience in place and storytelling, moving through the different realities that shape entrepreneurship in Johannesburg, from the township economy to academic and innovation spaces, the city and entrepreneur support organisations.

We do not want delegates to see only polished offices and finished success stories. We want them to understand how opportunity is created, who creates it, what it costs and why different parts of an ecosystem must connect.

We are calling on sponsors and partners to stand with us.

The scale of this response shows that the work matters far beyond one event. We invite companies, development institutions, foundations, government agencies, universities, investors and organisations committed to African entrepreneurship to partner with ASEB 2026.

Support can be financial or in kind, including transport, accommodation, catering, event production, technology, media, printing, awards and the ecosystem tour.

This is an opportunity to support the people and institutions creating the conditions in which African entrepreneurs can survive, grow and reach new markets.

To discuss sponsorship or partnership, contact:

[email protected]
Mobile and WhatsApp: +27 81 085 9737

This is no longer an invitation to vote.

It is an invitation to enter the room where the people behind these votes will meet and decide what Africa must build next.

If 19,683 verified votes tell us who people believe in, ASEB 2026 must help us decide how institutions will stand behind them.

Secure your physical or online ticket:

https://www.quicket.co.za/events/393940-africa-startup-ecosystem-builders-summit-and-awards/ #/

20 to 22 October 2026
Alexander Forbes, Sandton, Johannesburg
www.asebs.com

15/09/2026

SOME FINALISTS DID NOT ASK HOW MANY VOTES THEY HAD. THEY ASKED WHETHER THEY REALLY DESERVED TO BE SEEN.

Some wanted to know whether the nomination was real and whether someone had genuinely noticed their work strongly enough to put their name forward.

Others asked, “Am I really an ecosystem builder?”

They had spent years creating programmes, connecting entrepreneurs to opportunities, building communities and solving problems that established institutions had overlooked. Yet nobody had ever given their work a name.

They were building ecosystems without knowing that others across Africa were carrying the same responsibility, facing the same limitations and wondering whether their work would ever be noticed.

For some, the nomination was deeply emotional. It meant that years of largely invisible work had finally reached someone.

Then came another painful question. Would they be able to afford to enter the room where their work might be recognised?

This exposed the contradiction at the heart of our field. Africa depends on ecosystem builders to create opportunities for entrepreneurs, yet many remain unsupported by the systems they are helping to hold together.

Tonight, at exactly 23:59 South African Standard Time, public voting for the ASEB 2026 will close.

We received 1,786 nominations from 52 African countries, from which 145 finalists were selected across 29 award categories.

To everyone who nominated someone, you may never fully understand what that decision meant. You did not simply submit a name. You told someone that their work had travelled beyond the place where they had been carrying it.

If you have not voted, this is your final opportunity:

www.asebs.com/finalists

At 23:59 tonight, the current early bird ticket prices for physical and online participation will also end.

From 20 to 22 October 2026, we will gather at Alexander Forbes in Sandton, Johannesburg, for the fifth anniversary edition of ASEB.

The journey began in Johannesburg in 2022, continued to Nairobi in 2023, Accra in 2024 and Addis Ababa in 2025. This year, we return to Johannesburg under the theme "From Movement to Institution".

We chose this theme because being noticed is not enough. Recognition can affirm someone, but only institutions can ensure that important work does not continue to depend on exhaustion, personal sacrifice and chance.

If you voted because you believe in someone’s work, do not allow your support to end when voting closes. Join us physically or online. Learn from the finalists. Sponsor someone’s participation. Partner with the Africa Startup Ecosystem Builders Society and help us build a professional home for this field.

Secure your early bird ticket before 23:59 SAST tonight:

www.asebs.com

At midnight, voting will close and early bird prices will end.

What must not end is our willingness to support the people building the conditions Africa’s entrepreneurs depend on.

10/09/2026

A CERTIFICATE CANNOT GIVE A FOUNDER CUSTOMERS, CAPITAL OR A WORKING ECOSYSTEM.

Africa tells young people that entrepreneurship is the answer when economies cannot create enough jobs. Yet we send many of them into environments where customers are difficult to reach, capital arrives too late, policies are disconnected from reality and support ends when programme funding ends.

A founder can complete several accelerators, collect certificates and appear in impressive impact reports, then close the business because the conditions around it never changed. The founder carries the shame of failure, while every programme continues reporting that person as trained, mentored and supported.

This is why the Africa Startup Ecosystem Builders Summit and Awards, known as ASEB, was born. We recognise the people and institutions working behind founders, but recognition without evidence will not strengthen the field.

At ASEB 2026, Dr Phumlani Nkontwana will give the first public presentation of three years of research through “The State of the Provincial Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in South Africa: A Live Sub National Demo.” His work will reveal what national averages often hide and help builders in smaller provinces and overlooked communities see their realities represented.

On Day Two, Dr Nkontwana will join Professor Erik Stam for “From Ecosystem Language to Ecosystem Evidence: What Does It Really Take to Build an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem?” They will ask what Africa is measuring, what our programmes are actually changing and who becomes accountable when money is spent but entrepreneurs’ conditions remain the same.

Tim Gelissen, Co Director of the Innovation for Policy Foundation, known as i4Policy, will join us as this evidence moves towards policy. Utrecht University, Stellenbosch University and i4Policy are collaborating on the next version of the Entrepreneurship Policy Learning Series for Africa, connecting research with those responsible for acting on it.

This year, ASEB received 1,786 nominations from 52 African countries, producing 145 finalists across 29 categories. These finalists represent the people and organisations building the systems we ask founders to trust.

Voting closes in five days, on 15 September 2026. Vote for them, share their work and help Africa learn their names.

Vote here: https://www.asebs.com/finalists

From 20 to 22 October 2026, we gather at Alexander Forbes Inc. in Sandton, Johannesburg, under the theme From Movement to Institution, because Africa cannot continue placing work this important on temporary projects and exhausted individuals.

If you support founders, fund programmes, shape policy, conduct research or run an entrepreneur support organisation, come and hear the evidence and help determine what Africa must build differently.

Physical seats are limited, early bird tickets will close soon, and online participation is available.

Join in person or online and purchase your ticket here: www.asebs.com

09/09/2026

CONFIRMED SPEAKER: PROFESSOR ERIK STAM

A founder completes an accelerator programme.

There are photographs, certificates, reports and celebration posts. The programme records another successful cohort. The funder receives the numbers. The ecosystem adds another activity to its annual report.

But after the applause, that founder may still return to the same reality: no customer, no capital, no route into a larger market, no supportive policy and no institution prepared to walk with them through the difficult years of building.

The programme happened.

But did the entrepreneur’s conditions change?

This is one of the uncomfortable questions we must be willing to confront if we are serious about supporting entrepreneurship in Africa.

Africa has become fluent in the language of startup ecosystems. We speak about hubs, accelerators, innovation, investment, mentorship, policy and entrepreneurship programmes. We count applications, training sessions, participants, pitch events, grants and businesses supported.

But activity is not the same as progress.

We can run more programmes every year while the environment around founders remains fragmented. We can train thousands of entrepreneurs while access to markets, finance, knowledge, infrastructure and responsive institutions remains beyond their reach. We can celebrate innovation while the people building our startup ecosystems continue working in isolation, underfunded and largely invisible.

The painful truth is that a founder cannot be trained out of a broken system.

At ASEB 2026, we are bringing evidence into the room.

We are honoured to confirm **Professor Erik Stam**, Professor of Strategy, Organization and Entrepreneurship at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, as a speaker at the fifth anniversary edition of the Africa Startup Ecosystem Builders Summit and Awards.

Professor Stam is internationally recognised for his research on entrepreneurial ecosystems and productive entrepreneurship. His work has helped governments, researchers and ecosystem practitioners understand that successful entrepreneurship does not emerge from one programme, one fund, one hub or one policy. It grows when interconnected conditions such as leadership, finance, talent, knowledge, networks, institutions, infrastructure and market access begin to work together.

He will join ASEB 2026 live from the Netherlands for a featured session titled:

**“From Ecosystem Language to Ecosystem Evidence: What Does It Really Take to Build an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem?”**

This will not be another conversation designed to make us feel good about the work we are already doing.

It will challenge us to examine what an entrepreneurial ecosystem really is, what it is not, why isolated interventions rarely create systemic change and what Africa should measure if we genuinely want to know whether the conditions surrounding founders and startups are becoming stronger.

If you run an incubator, accelerator, innovation hub, university entrepreneurship centre or enterprise support organisation, you should be part of this conversation.

If you fund entrepreneurship programmes, you should be asking whether your investment is producing stronger businesses and stronger ecosystems, or simply more activities to report.

If you design startup policy, mentor founders, mobilise capital, conduct research or build platforms intended to support entrepreneurs, your experience belongs in this room too. ASEB is not only asking you to attend and listen. We are inviting you to contribute to the difficult work of understanding what must change.

This is why ASEB 2026 matters.

It is where Africa’s startup ecosystem builders are seen, connected and begin to recognise themselves as a field. It is where researchers meet practitioners, policymakers meet founders, funders meet the people implementing their programmes and institutions are challenged by the realities that polished reports often fail to show.

This year, ASEB received **1,786 nominations from 52 African countries**, resulting in **145 finalists across 29 award categories**. Behind those numbers is a continental community of people and institutions doing the often invisible work that allows founders and startups to survive, grow and contribute to their economies.

From **20 to 22 October 2026**, that community returns to Johannesburg, where the ASEB journey began in 2022, for our fifth anniversary edition at **Alexander Forbes in Sandton**.

If you can travel to Johannesburg, be in the physical room. Come prepared to listen, question, share what your ecosystem is facing and build relationships that can continue beyond the Summit.

If you cannot travel, you do not have to miss the conversation. **Online participation tickets are also available**, allowing ecosystem builders, institutions, founders, researchers and policymakers across Africa and beyond to join the programme virtually.

Do not wait until photographs from Johannesburg begin appearing online to realise that this was the conversation your work needed.

Come for the evidence.

Come with your experience.

Come with the questions your reports have not answered.

Come because Africa’s founders deserve more than programmes that end when the funding cycle ends.

**Be in the room, physically or online, and help us build the field.**

Purchase your ASEB 2026 ticket:

https://www.quicket.co.za/events/393940-africa-startup-ecosystem-builders-summit-and-awards/ #/

Learn more:

https://www.asebs.com

Africa Startup Ecosystem Builders Summit & Awards

02/10/2026

25/09/2026

23/09/2026

20/09/2026

18/09/2026

16/09/2026

15/09/2026

10/09/2026

09/09/2026

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Listing takedown request