Black economic empowerment under the spotlight at Tshwane Business Week

The Innovation Hub recently participated in the Tshwane Business Week 2004 exhibition and conference, held at the Reserve Bank in Pretoria from 10 - 12 May.

The Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality has a vision of becoming a leading African city of excellence that empowers its community to prosper in a healthy and safe environment. Their goal is to strengthen social foundations and increase economic activity, and in so doing become a reference point for broad-based empowerment for other local governments in the country. The conference theme, therefore, focused on Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) with a purpose of developing a broad-based BEE strategy for the Metro.

The Innovation Hub's exhibition stand at the Tshwane Business Week held at the SA Reserve Bank early in May this year.

Topics addressed at the conference included preferential procurement practices, employment equity, local economic development and technology development.

Blue IQ and some of its projects, including The Innovation Hub, the Gautrain and the Automotive Cluster, were represented at the conference. The Innovation Hub's representatives, CEO Dr Neville Comins and Corporate Affairs Manager, Tsietsi Maleho, presented a paper on Technology Development.

One of the conference highlights proved to be the good practice site visits, which included visits to The Innovation Hub, the Automotive Supplier Park, and the fresh produce market. More than 60 enthusiastic delegates visited the construction at The Innovation Hub's new site, and were impressed by the site plans and the progress with the development of the infrastructure.

Ongoing engagement with Tshwane Metro regarding The Innovation Hub's strategic objectives of helping to create knowledge intensive companies and changing the profile of the workforce to knowledge workers, led to its classification as a Special Mayoral Project in 2003. The Innovation Hub was also instrumental in the planning and development of the Tshwane Local Economic Development Strategy in 2003.

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