Westerwelle Entrepreneurship Program: East Africa

What is the Westerwelle Entrepreneurship Program?

Westerwelle Entrepreneurship Program is a 6-month program for innovative tech startups in Rwanda and Tanzania. 30 selected startups will be provided with the right infrastructure, skills and networks to advance their tech solutions.

This program is supported by Make-IT in Africa, a project by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Program benefits

• 6-month free access to workspace at the Westerwelle Startup Haus Kigali/Westerwelle Startup Haus Arusha.
• Access to Makerspace / digital fabrication lab and product development support.
• Business and leadership skills training with specialized experts.
• Technical advisory support: legal, financial and digital marketing.
• Individual mentoring with investors, business leaders and industry experts.
• Online/offline meetups with peers and entrepreuneurial communities around the world.
• Linkage with East African corporates, investors and other key players.

Who is this program for?

• You are passionate about building an innovative high-growth venture addressing a need in a market.
• Your product is built on technology: IOT/ Sensoring, Data Analytics/ Intelligence/ AI/ Machine Learning, Virtual Reality, Robotics, Drones/Aerial Imagery, Digital Platforms, Blockchain, etc.
• You and your team members are domain experts with complimentary skills and have a track record working as a team.
• Your startup solution has a clear business model and is able to scale its operations in East Africa.
• Your startup’s product/service contributes to the achievement of the SDGs (i.e. safe and fair job creation, potential to help underserved or low-income communities, climate mitigation and adaptation).
• You have women in your management team (executive or non-executive).
• Your operations are based in Rwanda or Tanzania.

Important dates (all times in EAT):

• Application deadline: December 15th, 2022 at 11:59 pm EAT
• Online Info session 1: November 23rd, 2022 at 4:00pm EAT
• Online Info session 2: December 9th, 2022 at 4:00pm EAT
• Notification of selection: December 24th, 2022
• Program start: January 3rd, 2022

More info

Please try to answer the questions as accurately as you can, it will take you approximately 20 minutes to fill out the form. We will only consider fully filled applications.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
Email: info@westerwelle.haus