Rinchi
TechInAfrica – Kinaya Ventures has revealed innovative startups that will be joining this year’s cohort of the Spring Fellowship Accelerator program. They will take part in a 16-week program taking place in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. They will be provided with a curated program of mentorship, networking, and support to accelerate their solutions and scale their businesses.
The program will end with a Demo Day in Abidjan where they will pitch their ideas to in front of a pool of industry leaders and leading investors for follow-on funding. Furthermore, they will also get the opportunity to interact with successful entrepreneurs as well as build and grow their startups.
For this cohort of the program, Kinaya has received applications from all over Africa with the participation from Nigeria (36%), Ghana (11%), Kenya (7.5%), Uganda (7%), Tanzania (6.9%), and Cote d’Ivoire (5%), among others.
The Spring Fellowship Accelerator is a collaborative program with Nestlé Research & Development and ELLE.CI. Together they will support the startups to disrupt the foodtech, retailtech, martech sectors, with the collaborations with industry leaders and key brands in SSA.
The selected startups for this year’s cohort of the Spring Fellowship Accelerator program are Exportunity, Benin; Last mile for BOP, South Africa; Tracksend, Nigeria; and WAFCo, Tanzania.
About Nestlé R&D
Nestlé has the world’s largest private food and nutrition research organization, involving about 4,200 people in around 23 R&D centers worldwide, including the R&D Center in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, which opened in 2008. With nutrition at its core, Nestlé R&D is committed to making the Nestlé portfolio even tastier and healthier, to fulfill its purpose of enhancing the quality of life of people and contributing to a healthier future. In 2018, Nestlé invested about CHF 1.7 billion in R&D
About ELLE.CI
ELLE.CI is the No. 1 women online magazine in Francophone Africa. ELLE.CI is part of the ELLE planet. ELLE is the No. 1 fashion magazine brand in the world, with 45 editions, 34 websites, and more than 158 supplements worldwide. The ELLE.CI brand reaches over 1 million influential readers, users, fans and followers in Francophone Africa and beyond, across all platforms, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and inspires women to explore, cultivate and celebrate their personal style in all aspects of their lives – fashion, beauty, lifestyle, food, employment.
About Kinaya Ventures
Kinaya Ventures is an open innovation and seed funding platform co-founded by Laïssa Mouen and Eva Sow Ebion. Kinaya Ventures has offices in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and in Dakar, Senegal. Since starting its operations in 2018, the platform has deployed acceleration and upskilling programs dedicated to startup founders and intrapreneurs in Africa: Upscaler and Spring Fellowship. Kinaya Ventures is also about to launch a new startup program targeting more specifically very early-stage startups. The program has been white-labeled for Orange Corners and Sonatel in Senegal. In partnership with Facebook, Kinaya Ventures is deploying “Boost with Facebook” that aims to support the digital transformation of 10,000 SMBs in 6 countries in Francophone Africa: Benin, Cameroun, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, DRC, and Senegal.
The platform is also developing a seed funding activity for startups, as well as advisory activities for the implementation of corporate innovation strategies in large corporations, and of innovation ecosystem policies for international institutions and governmental agencies.
