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Technology for Women In Business
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Hendricks opens TWIB conference in Mpumalanga - 8 August 2003
The Technology for Women in Business (TWIB) programme, an initiative of the Department of Trade and
Industry (the dti), was established with the objectives of:
- Creating awareness on the importance of technology to women in business,
- Promoting and nurturing the use of technology by women entrepreneurs,
- Creating business role models, and
- Promoting co-operation amongst enterprises and institutions to increase the use of
technology by women in business.
One of the mechanisms used to achieve the above objectives is through the annual TWIB
conference and awards ceremony. The conference raises the awareness of technology for
women entrepreneurs and highlights the importance of these issues to the broader business
community; the awards will honour those women in business who have successfully used technology
to improve their businesses. This year the conference and awards will be hosted by the Mpumalanga
province and will be attended by over 400 women from all nine provinces and will take place on the
8th and 9th August 2003.
The theme of this year's TWIB conference and awards is, "Technology Access - Linkages and Opportunities".
Through this theme the dti and TWIB are hoping to further promote the idea that women in business need to
improve their technological capabilities through business partnerships.
Work that is being done by TWIB to promote technology linkages is:
- Working with technology institutions and running technology transfer programmes.
- Running technology demonstration workshops, which show businesswomen what technology is
available, how to use this technology and where to access it.
- Encouraging women to recognise the benefits that technology can bring to their businesses.
- Providing women with information on the work done by technology institutions, such as CSIR
and MINTEK, the assistance that these institutions can give to businesses and how to get access
to these support services.
- Supporting women with technology access in the fields of manufacturing, minerals and energy,
construction, information and communication technology, tourism, and arts and crafts.
- Working with national and provincial government, municipalities, the private sector, academic
and tertiary institutions, technology agencies, and non-governmental organisations in the
implementation of technology programmes for women in business.
The work being done by TWIB must be extended into the broader community, for example, large
companies that have contracts with women owned small businesses should be finding ways to offer
these businesses support in order to upgrade the firms technology. International best practice
in successful economies has shown us the commercial and social benefits when large companies give
support and technology assistance to their small business suppliers.
The TWIB programme, by focusing on and encouraging technology access for women in business, taking
technology for women in business to the broader community and assisting these businesses to form
partnerships with technology institutions, big businesses and other small businesses, is instrumental
in helping us to achieve our vision of women becoming leaders in the economy.
Visit the TWIB website for more
information on this initiative http://www.twib.co.za
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