Accelerate Africa (AA) introduced an investor portal on Friday. The goal of this portal is to make it easy for investors to find all the startups that have taken part in AA’s programmes. The Chief Technology Officer of Future Africa, Ismail Olasunkanmi, disclosed this on his LinkedIn page.
Accelerate Africa, with headquarters in Yaounde, Cameroon, is an organisation that advises, coaches, and mentors start-ups to solve Africa’s biggest challenges.
Now, registered investors can sort startups by cohorts and other criteria. They can also access detailed information about each startup, including pitch decks, demo day presentations, founder details, valuation, fundraising amounts, and more.
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The portal also syncs the founders’ and investors’ calendars so that investors can schedule private meetings. Additionally, investors can show interest in a startup by emailing the company’s founders and investors, which can start a dialogue between the two parties.
Why Accelerate Africa came to being
Accelerate Africa (A2) is an initiative by Future Africa to create a community of carefully selected African founders who will support one another as they work through the five pillars of business transformation: business development, product development, storytelling, fundraising, and team building.
This includes dinners with other successful African entrepreneurs, one-on-one sessions with founders who have graduated from top global tech accelerators, a virtual demo day with investors from all over the world, cocktails to network with prospective corporate partners and clients, and strategic follow-on funding from Future Africa and other venture capital firms that are part of our Future Africa Collective.
The investment into Accelerate Africa
Future Africa has achieved industry-leading returns and impact through its first two funds, which invested over $10 million into 101 portfolio companies across 10 African countries. The total value of follow-on funding is over $1 billion. Through five secondary exits, they have achieved liquidity and returned more than $9 million to the investors.
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The Accelerate Africa Programme scaled up with the help of Prosper Africa, a US government programme aimed at boosting U.S.-African trade and investment.
Prosper Africa pledged $170 million in December 2022 at the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit to stimulate an extra $2 billion in U.S. investment in Africa and U.S. exports from Africa. This pledge includes five new collaborations between Prosper Africa and African fund managers, which will pool private funds to support entrepreneurialism and innovation in Africa. Among the five grantees were Future Africa, Altree Capital, ThirdWay Partners, Okavango Capital, and Endeavour South Africa.