Mozilla and AfriLabs partner to explore impactful technological ideas in Africa

AfriLabs is a network organization of tech and innovation hubs based in Africa. Boasting a network of 225 tech innovation hubs spread out across 47 African countries, the AfriLabs-Mozilla partnership will involve roundtable discussions on Africa’s budding start-up companies, co-founders and entrepreneurs, innovators, and developers. The discussions will focus on understanding the urgency of understanding are socio-economic wants, local expertise, and capacities of African countries while exploring areas that are underserved or capable of spurring a new wave of generational innovation.

In a statement, Anna Ekeledo, the Executive Director of AfriLabs said, “We are excited to listen and engage with the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Africa with Mozilla and we are hopeful that this partnership will open the right dialogues for better-fit innovations on the continent,” while expressing delight over the new cooperation.

What can we expect from the launch?

Joint exploratory research through roundtable discussions so as to deduce a better understanding of the ecosystem. On the other hand, Microsoft will borrow from these discussions insights on where to invest in the African tech ecosystem while providing support to local innovators having scalable ideas whose impact can cover the entire continent.

In her statement,  Alice Munyua, the Director of Africa Innovation Program, expressed her pleasure in partnering with AfriLabs pointing her desire to learn more on  Africa’s product needs, capacity gaps, and value creation.

AfriLabs is also involved in several other COVID-19 relief programmes such as:

• A grant program for hosting virtual Covid-19 meetups via a partnership with an AFD supported programme.
• Partnership with DFID’s COVID-action local production support programme
• Partnership with  VC4A’s venture showcase fund in an effort to provide early-stage startups with $1M in Seed funding.