Denis Opudo
According to WeeTracker Research, a total of 201 African startups received an investment worth $167.7 million in 2017. The investment is a growth of 28% as the number of funded startups increased from 153 in 2016. Startups from South Africa received the highest funding followed by Kenya and Nigeria following respectively. The number of funded startups from the three countries was 74, 46 and 34 respectively.
The brighter future in the startup market has convinced Pangea to put up its base in Kenya. Pangea, founded in 2017 is an accelerator based in Norway. Africans in diaspora from various Africa states founded the startup. The countries include Eritrea, Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo. The move to expand their services in Kenya will help in connecting African startups with the expertise. It also aims at connecting them to the needed capital and networks which will help them to grow. The lack of trust and transparency mostly affect African startups. Furthermore, many global investors lack knowledge of what is happening in the continent.
However, Pangea hopes to help in solving the problems affecting the African startups. Pangea’s main goal is to ensure that the startup’s investment is on standby. This will take place through a program that will run for three months. At the end of the program, ten selected startups will take home $50,000. The money for the investment of local startups comes from Pangea’s pool of investors. The accelerator is also carrying out an investor training program in Oslo in Norway. Their angel investors train on how to invest in African startups.
Furthermore, Pangea is planning to bring in investors who have knowledge about startups. This will offer the startups more than just money. It also plans to develop a crowd investment platform in June 2018. Therefore, startups will get investment from the investors through the online like marketplace. The investors will be able to buy or sell shares from various startups. The African diaspora gives money worth $160 billion annually which does not get into the startups. Ways are being created to channel even a fraction of that money to the growth of the startups. The accelerator is already getting applications from the whole of Africa. Most of the applications are coming from West Africa.
