Accelerate Africa (A2) prepares early-stage African founders for global scale. We work with them to identify partners who can provide them access to capital, customers and channels that can catalyze their startup’s trajectory. These partners include Global Technology Accelerators such as Y Combinator, 500 Startups, Techstars, Governments, Global Technology Companies and Entrepreneur Support Organizations.
Future Africa’s goal with Accelerate Africa (A2) is to build a highly curated community of African founders who support each other through our five critical building blocks for building transformative businesses; storytelling, team building, business development, product development and fundraising. This includes group dinners with successful African founders and businesspeople, one-on-one office hours led by successful startup founders who are alumni of leading global technology accelerators, a virtual demo day with leading investors across Africa and around the world, business development cocktails with potential corporate partners and customers and strategic follow-on investment from Future Africa and other VCs drawn from our Future Africa Collective.
Across our first two funds, Future Africa has invested over $10 million into 101 portfolio companies cumulatively worth over $1 billion in follow-on funding to date across 10 African countries, attaining industry-leading impact and returns. We have recorded five liquidity events through secondary exits and returned over $9 million to our investors.
Speaking of Future Africa’s learnings, Founding Partner, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji says, “For many others, the current market conditions are a reason to pull back from investing in Africa's promising startup ecosystem. For us, it activates our core genes which is building an ecosystem of support for founders. In tried-and-true tradition with companies like Andela, Flutterwave and Moove, we are delighted to work with ecosystem partners to nurture a new generation of bold and visionary leaders who will turn our continent's many challenges into billion-dollar global businesses - despite market conditions.”
The scaling of the Accelerate Africa Program was made possible through a partnership with Prosper Africa, the U.S. Government initiative to increase two-way trade and investment between the United States and African countries. In December 2022, at the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit, Prosper Africa committed to investing $170 million to catalyze an additional $2 billion in U.S. investment in Africa and African exports to the United States. As part of this commitment, Prosper Africa announced five new partnerships with African fund managers that will mobilize private capital to fuel African innovation and entrepreneurship. Future Africa formed a part of these five grantees alongside Altree Capital, Endeavor South Africa, Okavango Capital, and ThirdWay Partners.
Expanding on the partnership, acting Prosper Africa Coordinator Scott Cameron noted that programs like Accelerate Africa empower promising early-stage African startups with the networks and resources of leading U.S.-based Accelerators and allow symbiotic relationships to blossom. “Prosper Africa is excited to partner with Future Africa,” said Cameron. "The continent is booming with dynamic leaders who can address national challenges through innovation, and
we are delighted to mobilize support for these startups in partnership with Future Africa."
To learn more about the Accelerate Africa (A2) program, you can visit www.future.africa/accelerate-africa
