High growth startups and entrepreneurs in emerging and fast-growing markets across Africa can now apply for the Seedstars World Competition which is currently open for application.
Held in over 60 emerging and developing markets, the competition is aimed at impacting people’s lives through the promotion of, and investment in entrepreneurship and technology.
And now for its 7th edition, the competition is coming to Africa. This time the Seedstars World Tour will visit 29 Sub Saharan African countries including Sierra Leone and Cape Verde for the first time.
The Seedstars World competition has implemented some significant changes in the way it would run. This year, Seedstars will expand the local bootcamps it organises in each country it visits to now involve up to 30 pre-selected startups.
Furthermore, the top 10 startups from each local pitch will be given at least one-month access to its investment readiness programme. This will connect the startups to global experts, mentors, training materials and investors.
This years competition will also ensure gender balance by having more women involved in the competition process and increasing the number of female-led startups selected. It will also host a series of workshops specifically targeted at local investors in partnership with European Business Angels Network (EBAN) .
Also for this year, Seedstars says its $100-million Seedstars Africa Ventures investment fund will become active. With this, it will offer early stage investments to both successful applicants and its alumni startups.
Applications are currently open for African early-stage startups. For Nigerian startups, Seedstars local pitch competition will hold on July 19. And to be eligible for the competition, a startup must be less than 2 years old, have raised less than US$500,000 in funding, and have a minimum viable product. Also, the successful startup must show that its product is scalable for other African countries.
Local winners of the pitch competitions get to represent their countries at the Africa regional summit. The winner of this summit represents the continent at the Seedstars Summit in Switzerland. The winner of the Summit in Switzerland takes home up to $500k equity investment.
African startups have always performed well at the Seedstars World Competition overall. Infact they have won 3 of the last 6 global pitch contests in Switzerland. Nigeria’s SimplePay won in 2013, South Africa’s Giraffe did in 2015, and Agrocenta from Ghana won the 2018 edition.
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