Digital Africa says it aims to address the difficulties facing African start-ups and tech innovators through early-stage funding and capacity building.
This is contained in a statement issued by Juan Michelena, Associate Consultant to the UK-based tech initiative and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Lagos.
The initiative’s ambition is to serve as a “one-stop-shop” that offers support on training, project structuring, networking, regulatory support and funding.
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In terms of financing, it announced the Fuzé project that aims to support, at least 200 tech start-ups beginning from early 2022.
“By this, Digital Africa will launch a new small ticket fund in stages, from €10,000 (N4.75 million) to €200,000 (N 95.04 million) in form of repayable loans.
To fund the Fuze project, Digital Africa stated that France President Emmanuel Macron had announced a renewed financial commitment of €130 million (N61.78 billion) for the next three years, at the New Africa-France Summit held in Montpellier on Oct. 8.
In terms of skills, Digital Africa stated that it would join forces with ‘Make IT’ and the German Government to set up ‘Talent4StartUps’.
Talent4StartUps is a fellowship programme designed to meet the needs of talents that have been trained in tech and digital, and whose beneficiaries will be put in touch with start-ups actively recruiting.
Its teams are now preparing a roadshow that will take place at the end of this quarter and will stop in several African regions to strengthen connections with key partners and players in African ecosystems.
Speaking at the summit, Bosun Tijani, a Nigeria-British entrepreneur and CEO of Co-Creation Hub, spoke on the need to create value from African tech innovations in Africa.
“This will only be possible when the innovation ecosystems are strong and structured enough to retain talent and scale-up tech solutions.
“The priority today is, therefore no longer, as it has often been the case, to invest in isolated structures and the personalities that run them but rather to scale the approach by investing in the systems that will create more high-potential projects and build a truly pan-African digital value chain.
“Digital Africa shares this analysis – and that is why we decided to work with them,’’ Tijjani said.
Digital Africa’s CEO, Stéphan-Eloise Gras said that Digital Africa’s new organisation redefined “with our partners, allows us to reinforce our commitment to ‘made in Africa’ tech innovations and become a factory for the future African unicorns.
“Start-ups need a ‘one-stop-shop’ combining training, research, project-structuring, support to pro-tech and pro-innovation reforms, and financing’’.
From now on, Gras remarked that with the merger with Proparco, start-ups will find in Digital Africa a partner capable of offering them support from ideation and seed to growth and hyper-growth.
“By putting tech at the service of transparency and efficiency in development aid, and by getting closer to the private sector, Digital Africa wants to make a long-lasting difference!’’
Also speaking, Gregory Clemente, CEO, Proparco said that bringing together Proparco and Digital Africa would allow for creating a continuum of investment tools from the earliest stages to the most mature projects and create a kind of ‘investment value chain’ to support African tech entrepreneurs, their scaling up and their pan-African or international ambitions.
“We look forward to benefiting from Digital Africa’s on-the-ground expertise in this next phase, which will be positive for African digital innovation,’’ Clemente said.
Khaled Ben Jilani, Senior Partner, AfricInvest remarked that it (AfricInvest) was interested in projects that have already reached a certain level of maturity in order to support their growth.
“Of course, they cannot come to us if they have not passed the first stages.
“In 2019, more than 90 per cent of African start-ups reported difficulties in financing their seed stage.
“By focusing on this segment and building new direct funding capabilities, Digital Africa will provide an effective response to a real need – and will impact the lives of African entrepreneurs at the start of their businesses,’’ Jilani said.
NAN reports that Digital Africa was launched in 2018 with the mission to equip African tech entrepreneurs with capabilities to design and scale up ground-breaking innovations for the real economy.
To date, more than €73 million (about N34.7 billion) have been allocated to African start-ups within the framework of joint AFD, Proparco and Digital Africa.
This is in line with the commitments made by the President of the French Republic in his Ouagadougou speech. (NAN)
