In May 2026, The Workroom was commissioned to design and facilitate a full-day startup workshop in Cape Town, brought together by the South African-German Energy Partnership, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the Southern African-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AHK Southern Africa), UVU Africa and Ernst & Young (EY).
The workshop brought together startups working at the intersection of digital technology and South Africa’s energy sector. The starting point was a substantial piece of research — a report on digitalisation opportunities across six critical areas, from AI and cybersecurity to advanced metering and market-driven flexibility. Making that research useful was as much a design challenge as a facilitation one: how do you help early-stage founders engage seriously with complex findings and locate themselves within it — where are the real opportunities, what’s actually reachable, and where do the structural limitations lie?
We approached the programme design using design thinking principles — canvases, structured peer exchange, and iterative working formats that moved participants from insight to application. The goal was a room where honest conversation could happen between founders who don’t normally share a table.
It was a good reminder that the principles we bring to organisational facilitation travel well — whether the room is an NGO leadership team or a group of energy tech founders navigating a sector in transition.
