External impact & partnership report
From bold vision to investable future.
Innovation & Capital Investment Week 2026
18–22 August · Gaborone, Botswana
Prepared by Thrive Development Initiative (TDI)
With gratitude
Made possible by many.
Government, partners, judges, volunteers, speakers and founders gave time, expertise, platforms and practical support to an emerging Botswana-led vision.
The inaugural programme is complete. The shared journey towards the Accelerator/Lab and ICIW 2027 has only begun.
Ministry of Trade and Entrepreneurship · ICIW Steering Committee · Sir Ketumile Masire Teaching Hospital, venue
Pegasus Tech Ventures · Startup World Cup
Venture Pulse OS, technical partner · QuantumMind Consulting, co-host · Judges from Orange Digital Center Botswana, Moola Capital, Venture Pulse OS and Botswana Tech Fund
Gebeya · UMEMBA Health · VibeCode Africa · International Code Council · REN21 Renewable Energy Champions Initiative
BONELA, equity, human rights and inclusion, with Global Fund-supported refreshments at the Health & One Health Forum
Volunteers · media team · Master of Ceremonies · moderators · designers · speakers · applicants and competing startups
Every financial, technical, institutional, voluntary and in-kind contribution moved the vision forward. Thank you for standing with TDI.
The proposition
A small enterprise with a system-sized ambition.
Home grown. Locally rooted organisations can originate credible platforms, mobilise global relationships and open pathways for Botswana’s innovators, when ambition is matched by partnership.
What ICIW set out to do
A catalytic platform linking innovation, entrepreneurship, capital, markets and public value, and the first layer of a connected TDI ecosystem.
Connect
Government, business, startups, academia, civil society, investors and technical partners in one opportunity architecture.
Commercialise (Learning Hub)
A learning hub where promising ideas, research and community solutions grow into viable, market-ready enterprises.
Include
Deliberate pathways for women, youth, persons with disabilities, rural innovators and emerging enterprises.
Globalise
Botswana founders and institutions linked to international expertise, mentorship, standards, investors and markets, and the Startup World Cup winner to Pegasus Tech Ventures’ wider networks.
Aligned with national priorities
Steered together
ICIW Steering Committee member organisations
Proof of delivery
What TDI and its partners accomplished.
Concept to delivery, through formal partnerships, government endorsement, technical contributions, negotiated services, volunteer effort and the founder’s national and international reach.
Political commitment
The official opening address by Mr Joel Ramaphoi, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Trade and Entrepreneurship, on behalf of the Minister, signalled commitment to sustaining ICIW and the Startup World Cup Botswana Regional Finale.
Strategic platforms for translating Botswana’s transformation agenda into innovation, competitive enterprises, investment and jobs.
AI & Health Equity Masterclass
With BONELA and US-based UMEMBA Health.
Build Africa Vibecoding Marathon
A 24-hour virtual challenge with VibeCode Africa and Gebeya. One bold call: stop talking, start building.
ICIW website & social identity
A dedicated platform built to run registration, communication and pipeline management.
An innovation pipeline
An innovation pipeline, not only an event.
A multidisciplinary review turned 81 applications into a Top 30, a Top 10 and a live regional finale.
Four connected sector forums
From Botswana to the world
A global gateway for local ambition.
The Pegasus Tech Ventures partnership gave an emerging enterprise a voice in an established global competition network, and gave Botswana’s startups a visible international pathway.
A defining decision
TDI felt the scale of the opportunity and signed the agreement anyway.
Experience from the 2025 Botswana technology ecosystem and the founder’s professional networks gave it the confidence to build at speed, beyond its age or balance sheet.
Recognised on the global stage
A special thank-you to Thrive Development Initiative from Startup World Cup.
Presented by Bill Reichert, Chief Evangelist of Startup World Cup and General Partner at Pegasus Tech Ventures.
The Botswana competition journey
Startup World Cup Botswana · Regional Finale
Pitch day at the Regional Finale.
Seven finalists defended their business models live, before a multidisciplinary judging panel and a full auditorium.
On stage
On stage
On stageLive pitches at the Regional Finale.
What every founder had to prove.
Independent assessment and rigorous questions tested each venture against the dimensions investors and markets apply.
Seven took the stage
The judging panel
Submissions, assessment and judging ran on the Venture Pulse OS digital platform.
Celebrating the Top Three
Recognising Botswana’s top three.
The finale closed with recognition of the Top Three and a Regional Champion with a pathway into the global Startup World Cup ecosystem.
Meet the Regional Champion
OrionX, Botswana’s Regional Champion.
OrionX (Uhuru AI) won the Startup World Cup Botswana Regional Competition from a field of 81 applications, and goes on to represent Botswana at the Grand Finale in San Francisco.
OrionX is a Gaborone-based, Africa-first AI research company whose purpose is to unleash the African imagination. Its research lab, Uhuru Labs, builds the Uhuru family of foundational models, with work spanning reasoning, evaluation and multilingual, code-switching capability for African languages.
Those models power the Uhuru AI platform: one workspace for chat, documents, data analysis, knowledge search and agents, with specialised models for education, business, legal, health, public-sector and research work. It is built for African users, institutions and infrastructure realities, and designed to be usable globally.
Co-foundersMthabisi Bokete, Chief Executive Officer, and Monti Kgengwenyane, Chief AI Officer and Head of Uhuru Labs.
What the title carries
Global visibility, mentorship and investor networks through Pegasus Tech Ventures and the Startup World Cup.
TDI’s commitment reaches beyond the podium: connecting the wider pipeline of finalists with mentorship, capital and markets.
Together at ICIW 2026
What becomes possible when government, business, civil society, academia, entrepreneurs, communities and global partners choose to build together.
The deeper value
The gap is the opportunity.
The competition surfaced ventures across nine sectors. It also exposed the recurring distance between a promising pitch and an investable, procurement-ready, scalable enterprise.
From dialogue to deal flow
Sector opportunities emerging from ICIW.
Technical discussion met enterprise demonstrations, government priorities and emerging proposals. The next task: structure them into investable pipelines.
Green industrial growth
- Renewable generation, storage and productive-use energy
- Critical-minerals lifecycle, circularity and responsible beneficiation
- Green materials, standards and regional market access
- Sustainable finance, tax and VAT, carbon markets, bankability
Health and bio-economy
- AI-enabled maternal screening, including the BabyChecker proposal
- Digital and USSD mental-health and maternal-care services
- Climate-resilient, energy-efficient health infrastructure for future NHI
- Research commercialisation, local manufacturing and One Health food security
Entrepreneurship, enterprise readiness and ecosystem capacity
- Capacity and training across the whole enterprise lifecycle
- From consumers of AI to builders of local IP and talent
- Founder wellbeing as human infrastructure
- Showcases that put innovators in front of partners and investors
- A structured gateway to capital and global markets
Strategic engagements
Beyond the auditorium.
Bilateral engagements connected TDI and an REN21 Renewable Energy Champion with senior officials for trade and entrepreneurship, energy, lands and agriculture, and the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme.
Pathways opened
Innovation must include everyone
Equity as an investment principle.
Inclusion was treated as a condition for better innovation, wider markets and more durable outcomes, not as a side programme.
Women-led enterprise
Mobilisation, speaker and moderator roles, Women in Energy, pitching, care-economy innovation
Youth opportunity
Technology learning, volunteering, entrepreneurship exposure, coding, emerging founders
Rural & community innovation
Maternal screening, food security, climate-resilient agriculture, low-bandwidth services
Disability-led enterprise
Representation in planning, and a pathway to a disability-enterprise database and accelerator support
What beneficiary-centred delivery now requires
- Financing for accessibility, transport, interpretation and sponsored participation
- Enterprise diagnostics and tailored plans, not one-size-fits-all training
- Practical support with governance, finance, compliance, validation and market readiness
- Introductions that lead to mentorship, procurement, pilots, customers and investment
- Disaggregated follow-up at three, six and twelve months
Participant signal. 11 evaluation responses; 10 attended in person; all 11 open to future contact. Most-cited next steps: mentorship or technical support, investment or funding, market opportunities, and research or knowledge partnerships. Indicative, not representative.
Building through constraint
Resilience delivered the proof of concept.
A recently established, women-led SMME delivered the inaugural programme while still building its own systems, credibility and resource base.
Under pressure from
The response
- Website and ICIW platform built at speed through negotiated local services
- A Steering Committee mobilised professional expertise, largely in kind
- Government endorsement strengthened national positioning
- Partners contributed platforms, expertise, refreshments, visibility and connections
- The programme adapted and delivered, forums and finale included
Why this matters to partners
TDI has shown origination, convening and execution capacity. Partners can now help de-risk, professionalise and scale a platform that already has a startup pipeline, government relationships, international connections, digital infrastructure and a tested public proposition.
The investment lesson
Resilience made ICIW 2026 possible. Resilience alone should not be its operating model.
The next stage needs early, multi-year, properly resourced partnerships that turn founder-led momentum into durable institutional capacity.
The next institution
The Inclusive Innovation & Capital Investment Accelerator/Lab.
Connecting inclusive innovation with technical assistance, capital, markets, public priorities and global expertise, so promising ideas become validated solutions, sustainable enterprises and investable opportunities.
Who it would serve
A platform for partners, not a parallel system.
The partnership opportunity
What catalytic support can unlock now.
For partners ready to move beyond event sponsorship and help build a practical institution for inclusive enterprise and investment.
Anchor institutional partner
Accelerator/Lab founding partner
Sector partner
Capital & investment partner
Market & procurement partner
Inclusion partner
Knowledge & technical partner
Immediate funding priorities
ICIW 2027
From inaugural proof to measurable outcomes.
Keep the ambition and cross-sector energy. Add earlier commitments, clearer decision gates and stronger opportunity conversion.
- 01Plan, mobilise partners and confirm the venue nine to twelve months ahead
- 02Secure an anchor partner and a minimum viable budget before major public commitments
- 03Pilot the first Accelerator/Lab cohort and showcase it at ICIW 2027
- 04Curate investor, procurement, technical-assistance and policy meetings
- 05Reach regional and rural founders through structured outreach and hybrid access
- 06Ring-fence resources for women, youth, disability-led and community-based enterprises
- 07Measure enterprises strengthened, pilots initiated, procurement opened, partnerships formalised and capital discussions advanced
The voices that shaped ICIW
Featured speakers and programme contributors.
National leadership, specialist expertise, lived entrepreneurial experience and global perspectives. Roles reflect the programme records supplied to TDI.
Mining & Energy Forum
Health & One Health Forum
Entrepreneurship & Startup World Cup Finale
Additional contributors included Startup World Cup judges, startup finalists, moderators, entrepreneurs, exhibitors, technical teams, volunteers, institutional representatives and participants whose questions and experience enriched the programme.
The invitation
Back Botswana’s bold builders.
ICIW 2026 did not wait for perfect conditions. TDI built, adapted and delivered, showing what an emerging local enterprise can create when given access, trust and a global gateway.
Partner with TDI to turn the inaugural proof of concept into a year-round Accelerator/Lab and a stronger ICIW 2027, built around inclusive enterprises, investable solutions and measurable national value.
Donors & development partners
Catalytic finance for institutional capacity, inclusive access, technical assistance, evidence and early-stage enterprise development.
Government & public institutions
A local connector between national priorities, entrepreneurs, communities and global networks, turned into structured programmes and bankable opportunities.
Corporates & investors
Access to emerging founders, local technologies, inclusive supplier pipelines, sector challenges, pilots, procurement and investment.
Entrepreneurs & beneficiaries
Participation that does not end with a badge or a result: tools, relationships, markets and patient support to grow.
Dream bold.
Build beyond borders.
Thrive Development Initiative · Gaborone, Botswana
www.iciw.org · thrivedevelopment.co.bw
Evidence note and selected references
This external report presents verified programme achievements and forward-looking proposals. Emerging opportunities are identified as such and should not be interpreted as approved projects or confirmed financing.
Registration figures describe recorded reach at different stages and should not be treated as identical to verified daily attendance. The participant evaluation contained 11 responses and is used as indicative feedback only. Inclusion outcomes that were not fully disaggregated are not presented as achieved targets. The Accelerator/Lab and related pipelines remain proposals subject to feasibility assessment, consultation, partnership agreements and resource mobilisation.
Innovation & Capital Investment Week. (2026a). ICIW 2026 registration, participation and programme records. Thrive Development Initiative.
Innovation & Capital Investment Week. (2026b). ICIW 2026 Startup Competition: Selection process overview. Thrive Development Initiative.
Thrive Development Initiative. (2026a). ICIW 2026 programme and outcomes report. Gaborone, Botswana.
Thrive Development Initiative. (2026b). ICIW 2026 progress report against strategic key performance indicators.
Thrive Development Initiative. (2026c). ICIW 2026 participant evaluation questionnaire [Participant evaluation summary].
Pegasus Tech Ventures & Thrive Development Initiative. (2026). Startup World Cup 2026 regional partnership memorandum of understanding.
ICIW 2026 | Impact & Partnership Report