After a successful completion of Merck Accelerator’s first Satellite Program in Nairobi, the next step is Cape Town.
This is part of Merck’s Accelerator strategy to widen and open new channels for collaborating with startups across Africa. Our focus is on startups located in Southern Africa that present innovative solutions aligned with our focus areas of healthcare, life science, performance materials, and other business fields such as Bio-sensing and Interfaces, healthcare access solutions and precision farming.
The Accelerator Satellite in Cape Town and its benefits
The second series of our Satellite Program events will be in Cape Town, South Africa. Cape Town is one of Africa’s most developed hubs for tech startups and innovation. Home to several corporates, Cape Town sets its focus on local business needs and has become an important city for entrepreneurship. Public service innovation is a growing trend in Southern Africa where innovation hubs are collaborating with governments to create an enabling environment by working to bring about better regulations and less red tape. This makes Southern Africa attract the most VC funding in Africa in addition to a lot of instances of startup acquisitions by multinational companies in fields like biotechnology.
By inviting local founders to become part of our vast expert network, Merck is taking the opportunity to extend its innovative spirit to this African startup hotspot.
Applications for Cape Town, are open from May 21st until October 14th 2018. Winning teams of the program’s events will be invited on an all expenses covered trip to the Innovation Center in Darmstadt, to pitch their ideas and gain the opportunity to collaborate with Merck. They also stand to benefit from cash prizes of $3,000 and twelve months of sponsored membership at MEST Cape Town Incubator.
About Merck’s partner, MEST
MEST is a Pan-African training programme, seed-fund, an incubator, which started in Accra, Ghana in 2008. The organization is founded on the premise that ‘talent is everywhere but an opportunity is not’ and has worked tirelessly to create that opportunity for young Africans. Over the course of 10 years, they have trained hundreds of successful entrepreneurs and helped companies scale across the continent.
Inspired? Apply now!
If you and your team are tempted by cash prizes, support for your startup, and the chance to collaborate with Merck, then why not pitch your startup to us? The application phase for our Cape Town program opens on May 21st and runs until October 14th.