Through its Fuze programme, Digital Africa is funding €50,000 for early-stage Francophone startups.
The €6.5 million programme attempts to invest in businesses in 25 nations, including Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Tunisia, and Cote d’Ivoire, in the early stages of ideation and prototype development.
The Fuze programme anticipates giving African business owners a first-step funding of €20,000 and a follow-up funding of €30,000.
The programme only accepts applications from African enterprises that were co-founded or established by at least one citizen of an African nation that speaks French.
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The startup must also have been founded recently — less than 18 months ago — and operate in the Francophone Africa region with a technologically-driven business plan.
The Digital Africa initiative, started in 2018 by French President Emmanuel Macron, provides funding for the Fuze programme.
In order to build regional capacities and increase entrepreneurial funding in the area, the initiative aims to link digital entrepreneurs from Francophone Africa with worldwide partners.
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One of the many regional and international initiatives undertaken across the continent to create and support a transnational startup ecosystem that could be crucial in fostering innovation to tackle urgent issues like water scarcity and food hunger is Digital Africa.
African companies raised $3.5 billion in the first half of 2022, more than twice the amount seen in the same period the previous year. By the end of the year, venture capital agreements worth $7 billion are expected to be closed in the continental ecosystem, according to experts.
African startups continue to raise money for their creative solutions by taking part in internationally funded programmes to learn from other experiences, despite the lingering effects of the pandemic, the impending global recession, in addition to structural issues related to lack of training and local funding.
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. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh