Merrington brings a wealth of corporate experience to the senior leadership position at CiTi with extensive experience in the technology, innovation and the creative sectors having also spent several years in advertising and consulting services, including as Group Financial Director of BBDO and later as Chief Operating Officer for iKineo.
CiTi Chairman, Greg Reis, commented that Merrington's appointment is the beginning of a new chapter for the organisation, one that seeks to build upon the successes achieved by the organisation to date. "Since its inception in 1998, CiTi has been able to build upon the passion and talents of a number of executives who have each worked towards the vision of developing Cape Town and the region as a global technology cluster, a vibrant hub for innovation and a significant contributor to unlocking the region's potential for economic growth".
CiTi was founded as a non-profit organisation in 1998 by a broad group of industry stakeholders and inspired citizens and has grown to become the flagship organisation for the innovation sector in the Cape region and a blueprint for industry and public sector collaboration models for sector development.
One of CiTi's projects, the Bandwidth Barn, has been recognised as Africa's leading incubation and acceleration hub, supporting hundreds of start-ups and generating thousands of new jobs. Many entrepreneurs with their roots in the Bandwidth Barn have become global success stories, including Rapelang Rabana, founder of Rekindle Learning and winner of the Young Entrepreneur Award at the 2014 World Entrepreneurship Forum.
Joshin Raghubar, Chairperson of the Bandwidth Barn, sees an exciting road ahead. "One of our key strategic goals is to partner with leading innovation companies to expand our reach and effectiveness by connecting the Cape innovation sector to other leading hubs throughout South Africa and beyond". While the main Bandwidth Barn incubator is based in Woodstock, Cape Town, additional Barns were also opened in Khayalitsha and Bellville last year, with additional Barns planned for this year.
CiTi's main skills initiative, CapaCiTi, has been recognised as a key contributor to the development of scarce skills for the technology sector, while its Velociti enterprise development programmes have supported hundreds of SMME's and entrepreneurs through the high-risk early stage of their business development. SMME's participating in CiTi's VeloCiTi programmes have been shown to have more than double the five year survival rate of start-ups within the technology sector as a whole.
