Accelerate Africa, an accelerator program aimed at boosting early-stage African enterprises, has announced its first group of participants after four months of activity.
The initiative is spearheaded by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, the founder of the Pan-African venture capital firm Future Africa, and Mia von Koschitzky-Kimani, a general partner. Their vision is to establish Accelerate Africa as the continent’s equivalent of Y Combinator, one of the most successful startup accelerators globally.
Aboyeji explained that their efforts were initially concentrated on pre-accelerator programs to equip founders for participation in renowned accelerators such as Y Combinator and Techstars. However, recognizing the unique challenges and opportunities in Africa, they decided to launch an accelerator that would be more directly aligned with the needs of the African startup ecosystem.
The accelerator’s debut cohort is geographically varied, featuring ten startups from across the continent, including six from Nigeria, two from Kenya, one from Egypt, and one from Eswatini.
These startups span a range of industries that are essential to Africa’s growth, encompassing fields like artificial intelligence (AI), clean technology (cleantech), property technology (proptech), health technology (healthtech), automotive technology, human resources technology (HRTech), logistics, and financial technology (fintech).
A demo day at the Lagos Marriott Hotel will mark the culmination of the program, after which decisions will be made regarding potential pre-seed or seed investments for the participating startups. Investments are expected to come from angel investors and venture capitalists, with amounts anticipated to be between $250,000 and $500,000.
Here’s a glimpse at the innovative startups comprising Accelerate Africa’s first cohort:
- Afriskaut (Nigeria): An AI and data startup harnessing proprietary technology to identify Africa’s top sports talent.
- Agrails (Kenya): A cleantech company leveraging AI to build data systems that empower organizations to address and capitalize on climate risks and opportunities across Africa.
- Campus HQ (Nigeria): A proptech startup simplifying workspace discovery, setup, and management for mid-to-large-sized teams, essentially creating an “Airbnb for workspaces.”
- CDIAL (Nigeria): An AI company developing a conversational AI fluent in African languages.
- Checkups (Kenya): A healthtech startup offering affordable and accessible healthcare to underserved communities through micropayment options.
- Flickwheel (Nigeria): An autotech startup providing on-demand auto repair credits, vetted technicians, and automated repair tracking for efficient vehicle care.
- Juiceme (Eswatini): An HRTech startup offering blue-collar workers access to their earned wages via WhatsApp before payday, particularly for emergencies.
- Messenger (Nigeria): A logistics startup empowering delivery drivers to become entrepreneurs through income and ownership opportunities, including vehicle financing to own their delivery vehicles.
- PipeOps (Nigeria): A DevOps provider offering a suite of tools and services to help companies with limited cloud expertise set up, deploy, and manage cloud-based applications.
- Settle (Egypt): A fintech startup automating B2B payments, enabling clients to streamline payments to all suppliers with ease.
Accelerate Africa’s mission is to empower these ventures and shape a thriving future for African businesses.
