Bandwidth Barn

Bandwidth Barn Woodstock
Launched in 2000, the Bandwidth Barn, provides infrastructure support and incubation for tech and tech enabled businesses to grow and connect in Cape Town.

The Bandwidth Barn provides entrepreneurs with access to a shared and coworking facility with centralized reception, meeting rooms, board rooms, an events room and access to business experts and mentors. This lowers the barriers to entry that most start ups experience.

The Bandwidth Barn has incubated over a hundred companies since its inception and is home to Fintech Innovation Cluster members: ABSA Barclays Rise, Thromson Reuters Labs - Cape Town as well as a mix of 23 companies ranging from FinTech, HealthTech, EngineeringTech, mobile content creation, back office IT support, Robotics, publishing, accounting, machine learning, data analysis, digital currency and blockchain.

Hailed as Africa’s longest standing tech and innovation incubator, the Bandwidth Barn attracts international interest from collaborators looking to learn and co-create.

The Bandwidth Barn Khayelitsha
The Barn Khayelitsha, a coworking facility based at the Lookout Hill, is aimed at enhancing a sense of entrepreneurship and innovation within the Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain communities.

The Lookout Hill is in an area often referred to as the Khayelitsha/Mitchells Plain Development Corridor, which was chosen because it is home to a combined population of more than 700 000 people – a high concentration of Cape Town’s estimated 3.74 million inhabitants. The area is an ideal source of not only the qualifying companies to participate in innovative projects, but also to serve as a living lab environment in the development of relevant, highly innovative products and services within the market that will eventually consume those products and services.

One of our key strategic objectives is to drive inclusive innovation. Our programmes at the Bandwidth Barn Khayelitsha therefore focus on people and also small businesses that don’t have easy access to financial assistance or social capital. Khayelitsha is alive with creative spirit, which most often only needs a little encouragement and some equipment to unlock innovation. The community-based Barn Khayelitsha provides a unique opportunity to be part of a vibrant living lab ecosystem where users from the local communities take part in a creative social space and processes of transforming ideas into innovative technology products and services that will impact and improve their daily lives.