During a recent visit to the Czech Republic, Yacine El-Mahdi Oualid, Algeria’s Minister of Knowledge Economy, Startups, and Microenterprises, announced that Algeria has made substantial investments in startups since the passage of a new law in 2021. The funding initiative has injected over $6 million or 900M dinar directly into certified startups across the country, demonstrating Algeria’s commitment to fostering a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Asides the funding, the country has also established other supportive measures for startups, including the enactment of a law on self-entrepreneurship, the introduction of simplified joint-stock companies, the establishment of the National Labeling Committee, the Algerian Startup Fund, the “Algeria Venture” startup accelerator, and the “startup.dz” platform.
Earlier this year, Oualid revealed that his department has identified over 5,000 start-ups, out of which 1,100 have been awarded the “Startup” or “Innovative Project” label. This exceptional progress was acknowledged during the Government-Walis meeting, presided over by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
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The Minister highlighted the significant rise in the number of incubators, which has increased from 14 to 60. Additionally, the national fund for financing start-ups has received additional investments of 58 billion dinars (approximately $540 million) at the wilaya level. This injection of funds, at a rate of 1 billion dinars per wilaya, will substantially increase investments in start-ups. Notably, the fund typically invests between 5 and 150 million Algerian dinars per project.
Algeria’s focus on the knowledge economy aims to increase spending and development in this sector from the current 1% of GDP to 3% within five years. The Minister emphasized the inclusion of highly incentivized measures for research, development, and innovation in the 2023 finance law to accomplish this goal.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard