Seedstars Africa on the hunt for promising startups
The Seedstars Africa regional team will visit 20+ cities across sub-Saharan Africa, hosting bootcamps and pitch competitions.
Local winners will be invited to represent their country at the Regional Summit in Africa and win an all-inclusive trip to Switzerland, to introduce their startup to some of world’s most prominent investors and executives and enjoy the opportunity to win up to $1m in equity investments and additional prizes.
This year’s tour is kicking off on 29 June 2018 in Harare, Zimbabwe.
At Regional and Global Summits, the best startups of each country will benefit from local mentorship and exposure, as well as from being part of the largest global network and platform for tech entrepreneurship and impact investment, comprising entrepreneurs, investors and other ecosystem players and spanning over 80 countries around the world.
Local winners will also have a chance to be part of the Seedstars acceleration programme (Seedstars Growth).
“For the past years, there’s been quite a lot of buzz about Africa’s economic growth and social developing. The winning streak that African startups have put together at Seedstars World competition is the validation of the increased quality of startups across the continent, particularly this year, when we took home so many prizes.”, celebrates Claudia Makadristo, who continues by saying that “for this year we have a more country-focused strategy going on, built upon the large network of local ecosystem builders that we have managed to relate to through the past years, and we are looking into different initiatives to complement the great work they have done so far.”
Requirements
The companies selected to pitch at the Seedstars local events need to be less than two years old, have raised less than $500,000 in funding and have built a minimum viable product, ideally with existing traction.
The Seedstars World team is searching for one additional criterion - the startup’s regional and global scalability.
The organisation is looking for smart startups that are addressing underlying social challenges in their home countries and developing profitable products for the global market, to support their regional businesses and growth.
Applications are open for startups in South Africa, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal, Cameroon, Rwanda, Angola, Zambia, Mauritius, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, amongst others.
