Accelerate Africa Cohort 2

8 weeks. 10 founders. 75+ coinvestors, 2 founder operators. 7+ advisors. 1 goal.

This is not your typical accelerator.

It could be easy to mistake Accelerate Africa for your typical one-size fits all accelerator program, but nothing could be more different.

First – we will accept 10 founders who will receive support from 2 of the top operator VCs in Africa, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Mia von Koschitzky-Kimani who have built, advised, invested in and exited multiple successful businesses in Africa.

Second – Our program is designed to meet your needs as a founder in Africa, whether it be workshops across our 5 core areas, coaching sessions from our top advisors, or tech, legal, and finance clinics support through our clinics and office hours. Build community with other founders in our weekly Lagos / Nairobi meet ups, and for the last two weeks of the program, we will be together to prepare for the demo day taking place at the end of May, 2024.

Finally, unlike most accelerators, we don’t offer funding or take equity upon admittance. There is an opportunity that our fund Future Africa may invest alongside our other incredible investor network, to write you a pre-seed or seed stage check of $250,000 – $500,000 after the program, following our standard investment process including due diligence and an IC vote.

We believe founders who can turn Africa’s biggest challenges into global businesses come in a variety of backgrounds, abilities, languages, genders, ages, ethnicities, and more. This is why 40% of founders we have worked with are women, range in age from their 20’s to their 60’s, and come from and work in over 10 African countries.

The founders we back have some consistent features:

• Passionate about solving a real problem and have the track record or traction to prove it
• Deep understanding of their customers and consider it their life’s work to serve them
• Lived experience of the problem, driving them to build a business that seems impossible until it’s done

We do too. If this describes you, apply now. If this describes a founder you know, nominate a startup.