Our story
How Mwanga began
Mwanga did not begin as a non-profit. It began with one Startup Grind event in Johannesburg, and a founder who wanted to bring the same opportunity back to the community she came from.
In 2018, Vuyo Ncwaiba was living in Johannesburg when she attended a Startup Grind event, and it stayed with her. She had grown up in the Eastern Cape, and she could see exactly what an evening like that would mean for the founders back home. Giving them that, a real stage, real guidance, a community of their own, became something she wanted to do for the place that raised her.
She asked Sibongile Booi, an entrepreneur in East London, to build it with her. Together they applied to bring a Startup Grind chapter to the city, and they were accepted. Startup Grind East London opened its doors, with Vuyo as Director and Sibongile as Co-Director.
What followed was years of steady work: fireside chats with people who had built real businesses, events that pulled the city's founders into one room, and a community that grew around them. The team grew with it. Siya Hlobo joined to lead marketing and communications, the part neither founder claimed as a strength. Milenhle Maphumulo came on to hold the day to day together, and when he moved on, Mambo Munawa took up that role.
In time, the work began to outgrow its container. There were programmes we wanted to run, like the funding-readiness training we now deliver for the Mr Price Foundation, that a single Startup Grind chapter was never built to hold. So in 2025 we registered Mwanga as a non-profit company: a home wide enough for all of it, with Startup Grind East London as its flagship programme.
Startup Grind East London was the first light. Mwanga is how we carry it further.
