Nigeria dominates as Accelerate Africa unveils 10 startups for funding programme

Accelerate Africa, a pre-seed and seed-stage accelerator programme, has unveiled its first cohort of startups.

The startups were unveiled at Accelerate Africa’s inaugural demo day and second investor summit, which took place in Lagos last week.

Accelerate Africa partnered with Future Africa and Prosper Africa for its first cohort of startups.

The 10 startups selected are from Egypt (1), Eswatini (1), Kenya (2), and Nigeria (6). 

According to a statement on Saturday, the programme was designed to inspire and engage African investors, founders, and ecosystem players.

The demo day featured presentations from a select group of promising startups, offering attendees a firsthand look at groundbreaking ideas and disruptive innovations across fintech, proptech, agritech, logistics, auto tech, sports tech and data, among others.

Speaking at the event, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, co-founder, Accelerate Africa and founding partner, Future Africa, reiterated the need for local investors to seize the opportunities to enhance capital flows and contribute to Africa’s development.

“Africa has come of age! Now is the time for local investors to rise to meet the challenge of poor investment on the continent,” Aboyeji said.

“Initially, we launched a pre-accelerator programme under the assumption that the most effective way to attract funding for African companies was to showcase them to American investors.

“While this approach proved successful for a period, we have observed the dwindling inflows and investor appetite for African startups.” 

He further said the firm had now “decided to chart our own path by building an accelerator programme that can rival the best in the world”. 

“With this we are setting a new dawn for growth in Africa, declaring independence from Silicon Valley and telling the entire world that Africa has finally come of age,” he said.

“These startups are the seeds of billion-dollar African companies built to be global, from day one.” 

In her remarks, Mia Von Koschitzky-Kimani, co-founder, Accelerate Africa and managing partner, Future Africa, said as pillars of the programme, “we concentrated on five key areas: business development and go-to-market strategies, effective storytelling, product development, team building, and fundraising, alongside other complementary business aspects”. 

“All of the startups worked incredibly hard over the eight weeks of demonstrating remarkable dedication, as they made significant advancements in their ventures,” she said. 

Koschitzky-Kimani also said she firmly believes that Accelerate Africa not only met but surpassed the expectations, even though the ultimate test will be in how much investment they receive over the coming months.