Looking for a fellowship backed by corporate global leaders and cuts across the whole continent of Africa while giving you global exposure and providing seed funding for your startup? Then the Spring fellowship is for you.
Spring Fellowship is a 4-month accelerator program backed by global corporate leaders and created by Kinaya Ventures. Spring Fellowship will take place mainly in Abidjan and is open to 8 African startups operating across Agricultural Technology, Food Technology, Marketing Technology, and Retail Technology.
Spring fellowship is designed for a broad spectrum of entrepreneurs, whether it be founders or representing a team of early to growth-stage startups within the following verticals: across AgTech, FoodTech, MarTech/AdTech, and RetailTech. They are inviting promising African-based startup with at least a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and minimum traction to apply. Each vertical is led by a dedicated corporate partner specialized in the field. Spring fellowship’s distinctive open innovation approach is to team up promising African startups with large corporations. Elle Cote D’Ivoire will head the MaTech and AdTech vertical, Nestle will head the FoodTech, AgTech and RetailTech verticals.
Benefits
- Spring Fellowship will offer seed funding tickets of USD $15,000 per startup, as well as operational and expertise support.
- USD $45,000 in perks and discounts in digital/IT/advisory solutions and products.
- Join a network of 200 world class experts, corporates and investors.
What does the Spring Fellowship solve?
2018 was a monumental year for African startups, with US$ 1.163 billion raised in equity funding, a 108% YoY growth. But despite their capacity to develop disruptive solutions, products, services, 80% of African startups fail to succeed in their first year of existence. The top 3 reasons known are the inadequacy between their solutions and prospective clients’ needs; the lack of financing; the absence of depth of market. Hence, the fellowship will aid the startups in Africa to circumvent these three issues by providing startups with the needed resources to circumvent these problems and succeed.
Major partner – Kinaya Ventures
Kinaya Ventures is a Dakar / Abidjan based innovation and investment platform co-founded by two inspiring African entrepreneurs Laïssa Mouen and Eva Sow Ebion, backed by leading corporates partnerships and lifted by a leading team with key expertise in startups ecosystem, digital marketing, and investment. Kinaya Ventures’ mission goes beyond connecting the dots between startups, corporates and investors, to upskill entrepreneurs and help them scale. Kinaya Ventures’ ambition is to act as a digital ecosystem enabler in Francophone Africa and beyond. Kinaya ventures have designed Spring Fellowship, an accelerator fund backed by corporate partners which combines support to scale to seed funding, and is running Upscaler, an upskilling program dedicated to innovative entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs.
Eligible Regions: All countries in Africa
Interested? Apply for an innovation challenge which is the entry door to the accelerator program of Spring fellowship here. Final selection will be announced on July 30, 2019.
Deadline for application: July 7, 2019
Location for the acceleration program: Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, Africa
SOURCE
YouthOp
Spring fellowship
Featured image source: Kenyan Tribune
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