Bertha Centre For Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town: Our mission is to pursue social impact towards social justice in Africa, through teaching, knowledge-building, convening and catalytic projects with a systems lens on social innovation.

University of Cape Town, Graduate School of Business

THE BERTHA CENTRE FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship is the first academic centre in Africa dedicated to advancing social innovation and entrepreneurship. It was established as a specialised centre at the UCT Graduate School of Business in late 2011, in partnership with the Bertha Foundation, a family foundation that works with inspiring leaders who are catalysts for social and economic change, and human rights. In collaboration with the GSB, the Centre has integrated social innovation into the business school curriculum, established a wide community of practitioners and awarded over R7-million in scholarships to students from across Africa.

Our SIHI Focus Areas

Through our partnership with Johnson & Johnson, we aim to provide targeted support to social innovators in Africa using mobile technology to improve maternal and child health outcomes through engagement with the public sector, with a strong learning objective of exploring pathways to scaling their implementations towards greater health systems integration.

OUR ACTIVITIES

REPORT ON THE INTERSECTION OF INCLUSIVE HEALTH, AGRICULTURE, AND CLIMATE CHANGE

We collaborated with the Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship, the Bayer Foundation, and Impact Intelligence to conduct an analysis of the intersecting barriers to the issues of inclusive health, agriculture, and climate change. Our research identified social innovation solutions at the nexus of these issues in Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region. The findings of the report have been illustrated in interactive maps on the World Economic Forum website as well as on the Impact Intelligence website. A longer text will be available toward the end of 2024.

JUST FOR A CHANGE (JFAC) PODCAST EPISODE FEATURING SIHI MALAWI DIRECTOR DR. DON MATHANGA

We produced the Just for a Change (JFAC) podcast season 4 during the first half of 2024. Episode 2 in the series titled “What does a mosquito have to do with climate change?” features Dr Don Mathanga, who shares both the challenges and opportunities he sees in healthcare and climate change. Listeners can also catch up on earlier podcast episodes on Spotify or Apple.

Funding for social innovations

We provide funding to social innovation organisations to support key objectives.

Capacity strengthening

We conduct needs assessments, develop technical assistance plans and assist social innovators with monitoring and evaluation processes.

Education

We design, convene and evaluate a course on Leading Social Entrepreneurship. Through this we document lessons learned and explore emerging methodologies.

Peer learning

We facilitate peer learning processes by convening peer learning calls and providing funding for social innovation peer visits.

ABOUT US

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Originally trained as a physician in South Africa, he also read for a master’s degree in Public Health (University of London) and an MBA (University of Oxford) as a Rhodes Scholar. He has worked in paediatric clinical medicine, as well as in humanitarian and development programmes. As a Global Leadership Fellow of the World Economic Forum, he worked on developing public-private partnerships and innovations for development, later heading up the Forum’s own Schwab Foundation work in social entrepreneurship in Africa and the Middle East. He co-founded the African Social Entrepreneurs Network and, with colleagues, has established an award-winning social venture that builds low-cost medical devices for low-resource settings.

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Solange is an independent public policy and strategy consultant, Associate Faculty and Adviser with the Allan Gray Centre for Values-based Leadership and the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, based at the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town (UCT). Her clients include international organisations, national and provincial government departments, academic institutions, non-government organisations and philanthropic foundations. She teaches on Executive Education and MBA programmes at the UCT Graduate School of Business and the UCT School of Economics. She has a Doctorate in Constitutional Law from the University of Stellenbosch and a Masters degree in Law from the University of Cape Town. She worked for the Western Cape government for 10 years as the head of the Policy and Strategy Unit in the Department of the Premier.

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Katusha has served as the project manager for the Groote Schuur Hospital Innovation Hub as a part of her work with the Healthcare Innovation Initiative, was the editor of the first Innovative Finance in Africa Review, published in 2016, and facilitated and co-designed innovation workshops in partnership with IDEO.org and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design Thinking at UCT. Prior to joining the Bertha Centre, Katusha worked with Surgical Directions, a boutique peri-operative healthcare consultancy based in Chicago, IL, and with PricewaterhouseCoopers, as part of the Chicago Health Advisory practice working on multiple payer, provider, and pharma/life sciences projects across the American healthcare system. Katusha has a JD from the University of Kentucky Law School, and a Masters in Health Service Administration from Xavier University. She is Lean Six Sigma certified from Villanova University, and holds a certificate in Project Management from DePaul University.