The partnership plans to focus on building tools needed to mobilise the skills, knowledge and connections entrepreneurs need to develop, grow and scale their business, as wel as to promote social entrepreneurship and serve as a platform to attract investors and capital to the market.
Ben White, founder of VC4Africa.com says, "There is a serious lack of information and resources in this area. South Africa as a market dominates the space. How can we serve entrepreneurs in the rest of the continent fighting to make a difference? I believe we can achieve a lot by bringing the right people and tools together.” Jonathan Gosier of Appfrica.org adds, “At Appfrica Labs we practice these ideas on a niche-level everyday, it gives me great pleasure to be able to support the entire sector on a macro-level through this partnership."
The project plans to use Afridex.net, a business information aggregator developed by Appfrica Labs lead developer, Moses Mugisha. Afridex, inspired by popular websites like Crunchbase.com, LinkedIn.com and GetSatisfaction, was built in the Python framework Django and allows businesses to create profiles, monitor their brands and offers ‘portable widgets' that allow people to write and blog about them. As part of the partnership, Appfrica.org plans to build out a web community of various verticals (agriculture, tech, real estate, etc.) to allow for navigation through an index of companies that exist across the continent. According to VC4Africa.com, the most innovative aspect of the community, however, will allow groups of would-be-investors with similar interests to raise venture capital funds that can be invested in the businesses of the group's choice.
By taking the general concept behind venture capital and leveraging this community of nearly 5000 expatriated Africans, as well as foreign and local investors, the new web application aims to allow for the constructive application of capital to the African market. The team is seeking partnerships with like-minded organisations and plans to build on its active member base.
For more information contact Ben White at or Jonathan Gosier at .
