TECH STARS (1007)
Acelera Angola is an important supporter of change and innovation in Africa. Through its programs and initiatives, it continues to transform the Angolan and African entrepreneurial landscape.
Acelera Angola is a Luanda-based startup accelerator that promotes entrepreneurship and drives creative business in Africa. Founded in 2017 by its managing partner José Carlos Santos, an Angolan entrepreneur, its mission is to support innovative startups with high growth potential, offering them training, mentoring, networking, and financing services.
Under the management of José Carlos Santos, Acelera Angola has set up a series of programs and activities to support startups at different stages of their development.
These include the Clube do Empreendedor, an event organized jointly with the US Embassy in Angola and Unitel, offering entrepreneurs the opportunity to exchange experiences. There's also Acelera Mentoring, an event that offers free mentoring to startups at different stages and gives them the chance to collaborate with specialists.
In addition, Acelera Angola has launched several specific programs such as FEMTECH, a four to six-month business acceleration program for women entrepreneurs, BETA-START which aims to promote entrepreneurship in Angola, and ReStart, a fully digital program for Angolan women entrepreneurs who want to innovate and accelerate the growth of their businesses. Application for the sixth edition of that program was opened on August 1, 2023.
Since its creation, Acelera Angola has trained over 750 people, launched more than 22 programs across at least 18 target provinces in Angola, and supported more than 362 startups in various sectors.
It has a network of local and international partners who contribute to its development and that of its startups. These include the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Angolan government, which has supported several incubation and acceleration programs, and Total Energies.
Acelera Angola is therefore a benchmark accelerator in Africa, contributing to the continent's social and economic transformation through innovation and creativity.
Melchior Koba
Through Voyc AI, his client management compliance research company, he offers companies the possibility to supervise customer interactions and improve customer experience.
South African Matthew Westaway (photo) is the CEO and co-founder of Voyc AI, an Amsterdam-based start-up that uses artificial intelligence to analyze telephone conversations between companies and their customers. Through that company, he helps companies meet compliance standards and improve customer experience.
The CEO graduated from the University of Cape Town with a master's degree in computer vision and photogrammetry engineering in 2015. Matthew Westaway is driven by the vision of securing trust between companies and their customers by ensuring consistent quality and care in every interaction. In 2017, together with his friend Lethabo Motsoaledi, he came up with the idea of creating Voyc AI, after noticing the difficulties companies were experiencing in manually listening to and analyzing recordings of interviews with their customers. The project was launched the following year.
Since then, the former beneficiary of the Google for Startups Accelerator Africa program has attracted dozens of call centers in various regulated sectors in South Africa and England. The startup enables them to reduce compliance risks, improve operational performance, measure customer satisfaction, and identify customer vulnerabilities.
In September 2023, the entrepreneur was selected for ScaleNL Accelerator West Coast 2023, a 12-week immersive program designed to help startup founders enter the US market.
Prior to Voyc AI, the entrepreneur co-founded 3D Power, a company specializing in 3D printing, in 2014. In 2016, he also co-founded Hello Baby Prints, a startup specializing in baby technology, known for its 3D ultrasound printing product, Hello Baby 3D Prints. Matthew Westaway also co-founded Motsoaledi & West, a design-led innovation agency, in 2017.
Melchior Koba
The innovation center WETECH contributes to the empowerment of women and girls in the digital sector. It demonstrates that women can be key players in social innovation and sustainable development in Africa.
WETECH (Women in Entrepreneurship and Technology) is a Cameroonian innovation center that aims to promote tech entrepreneurship and innovation among women.
Founded in 2015 by Crescence Elodie Nonga, a seasoned entrepreneur, WETECH aims to create a network of dynamic women leaders by providing access to opportunities and resources that will help empower women through entrepreneurship and technology.
The center designs and develops coaching and mentoring programs for African girls and women. It also offers them training in entrepreneurship and technology. Among the programs organized by the center is WETECH WILE, which detects, trains, and supports high-potential women entrepreneurs to support their growth and access to investments.
The center also offers the WETECH WIC (Women in Code) program to teach web and mobile development to women over the age of 18. With the support of the Canadian High Commission in Cameroon, WETECH is developing the FundHer program, which aims to provide women with resources to help them improve their access to financial products and opportunities.
The latest program it launched is the #eSkills4Girls initiative, which has already enabled 115 young Cameroonian girls to learn computer coding and web development. Present in Cameroon, Senegal, and Togo, WETECH has already supported over 30 projects, organized more than 10 programs and activities, trained over 600 women, and impacted more than 2,500 women.
In 2022, the center won the Joint Innovation Challenge, an international competition organized by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Trade Centre (ITC).
Melchior Koba
After launching two businesses that unfortunately failed, he turned to technology, offering a fintech solution that enables small and medium-sized businesses to manage their accounts and access financial services.
Emmanuel Emodek (photo) is a Ugandan entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of ChapChap, a startup that helps small and medium-sized businesses keep their accounts and access financial services.
After graduating from high school, he opted out of university to help his mother and brothers earn a steady income. For that purpose, he launched two successive businesses which unfortunately failed. Then he met one of his former school teachers, Monica Kiconco Asiimwe, who asked him to come up with an idea for a solution that would help entrepreneurs.
"Monica saw something in me. She told me that she knew I could think up some kind of solution that would help small business owners stay afloat," Emmanuel Emodek indicated in 2019.
Following his former teacher’s advice, in 2016, he launched ChapChap. His co-founders in that endeavor are Monica Kiconco Asiimwe and James Alituhikya, a software engineer and at the same time one of Monica’s former students. ChapChap is an app that enables entrepreneurs to manage their inventory, sales, expenses, and profits and also gives them access to loans, insurance, and markets.
Since its launch, ChapChap has enjoyed remarkable success. In Uganda, the company already offers its services to over 20,000 micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. In 2019, its CEO was chosen from among eight entrepreneurs to receive the HRH The Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneurs Prize awarded by Unilever and Cambridge University's Institute for Sustainability Leadership.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Emmanuel Emodek worked as a cabin crew for Air Tanzania Company Ltd from 2005 to 2010. Between 2007 and 2012, he was an independent distributor for QNET Ltd, a lifestyle and wellness company that uses a direct sales business model to offer a wide selection of products.
Melchior Koba
She is an inspiration to all those who aspire to create a positive impact on society and the planet through technological innovation. Through her company, she is making Africa greener and cleaner.
Ugwem Eneyo (photo) is a Nigerian engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur. She is the CEO and co-founder of SHYFT Power Solutions, an energy technology company offering innovative Internet of Things (IoT) and software solutions to intelligently connect and manage distributed energy resources in emerging markets, particularly in Africa.
The Nigerian-born entrepreneur completed university studies in the United States, graduating in 2013 with a Bachelor's degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The following year, she entered Stanford University to complete a Master's degree and a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering.
In 2016, she co-founded Solstice Energy Solutions, which was later rebranded SHYFT Power Solutions. The company enables users to reduce their energy costs, carbon footprint, and exposure to toxic gases.
SHYFT Power Solutions has experienced remarkable growth and garnered many prestigious awards. In its inaugural year, the company clinched the MIT Clean Energy Prize and emerged as a finalist in Demo Africa—an esteemed competition hosted by the African Technology Foundation (ATF) that recognizes innovative African enterprises.
Before launching SHYFT Power Solutions, Ugwem Eneyo worked as a trainee environmental and regulatory consultant for ExxonMobil in 2011. In 2013, she was appointed Environmental, Socio-Economic, and Regulatory Advisor for the same company. After completing her master's degree, in 2015, she completed an internship, again at ExxonMobil, but this time as an environmental engineer.
Ugwem Eneyo is recognized as one of the leading figures in the energy sector in Africa and worldwide. Named one of the Forbes 30 under 30 in the energy sector, she has been invited to speak at several prestigious events.
Melchior Koba
ZongoVation Hub is an NGO that leverages technologies to promote socioeconomic development in often marginalized and disadvantaged Zongo communities. Doing so helps create a dynamic and inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem in Ghana.
ZongoVation Hub is a community technology innovation space dedicated to the development and growth of young entrepreneurs and startups in Ghana's Zongo communities. Founded in 2018, it helps young individuals transform their ideas into businesses by providing them with all the tools and networks they need.
Its founder and CEO, Mahmoud Jajah, is a serial entrepreneur and ecosystem builder whose vision is to transform Zongo communities into technology hubs across Africa.
ZongoVation Hub offers training programs in various technology-related fields, such as web development, graphic design, mobile application development, digital media, business development, and more. It also organizes charitable initiatives in the fields of health, education, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Its main program is the Zongo Startup Program, which aims to identify, train, support, and finance early-stage entrepreneurs and startups from Zongo communities in Ghana. The program includes a three-month incubation period to validate prototypes, followed by a four-month acceleration phase to perfect products and business models before presenting companies to investors.
Since its creation, it has launched seven programs and trained over 100 women and men. It has supported the creation of more than four companies. It is currently leading an initiative called Zongo Tech, which aims to train and develop 100,000 entrepreneurs and technology experts from Zongo communities by 2030. To achieve that goal, it plans to set up centers in all 16 regions of Ghana and strengthen its network of local and international partners. For the moment, it can count on Ghana Tech Lab, AfriLabs, ISpace, Google, the British Council, Social Enterprise Ghana, and Digital Zongo, among others.
Melchior Koba
He strongly believes that artificial intelligence can transform the world and create new growth and development strategies. He therefore provides companies with solutions that help them integrate AI into their operating sectors.
Marc Banoub (photo) is the CEO and founder of LyRise, a company that aims to solve the shortage of artificial intelligence (AI) expertise by creating remote AI teams. He is also a technology entrepreneur, AI trainer, and an AI and data community leader.
The Egyptian-born entrepreneur graduated from the American University in Cairo in 2014 with a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering. He then pursued his passion for AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain by attending the inaugural MIT Deep Technology Bootcamp in 2019, where he learned from world-class experts and mentors.
In 2019, he launched LyRise, a platform that connects companies with remote AI teams. His platform helps companies find, recruit, and manage skilled AI talent from around the world. It also offers training and mentoring to its AI teams to ensure they deliver high-quality solutions.
Apart from LyRise, Marc Banoub also founded Cairo AI, a community for young Egyptian machine learning, computer vision, and speech processing professionals. He also founded Lyra, a provider of AI-enabled business transformation solutions in Egypt.
Marc Banoub has led advanced AI training programs with companies such as Microsoft, enabling over 150 people to hone their skills and over 60 people to be co-certified. Since 2018, he has been the MENA (North Africa and Middle East) Ambassador of VETRI Foundation, a non-profit organization focusing on data sovereignty and ownership. Between 2016 and 2018, he worked for IGI Holding as a Technical Assistant to the CEO. He then worked for Transcendium, a catalyst for business transformations in the Middle East, as a transformation analyst for 4 months.
Marc Banoub has received several awards and recognitions for his achievements and contributions in the field of AI. For instance, in 2021, he was listed in the Forbes Middle East 30 Under 30. He also won a sponsored trip to visit executives from Google, Meta, Palantir, and many others in Silicon Valley in 2022.
Melchior Koba
More than being just an innovation space, Icealex is a dynamic and supportive community that brings together passionate, creative and committed people to make Alexandria a more prosperous city.
Icealex is a community-driven technology innovation space that aims to promote creativity, collaboration, and entrepreneurship in the city of Alexandria, Egypt. Founded in 2011 by Mohamed El-Sharkawy, an engineer with a passion for sustainable technologies and solutions, Icealex offers a variety of services and programs to support project ideas, startups, artisans, and students.
The innovation space stands out for its social and environmental commitment, seeking to provide local answers to local challenges. It offers technical workshops, rapid prototyping and digital fabrication services, project mentoring, a coworking space, networking activities, and social entrepreneurship training.
Icealex is also an international network of hubs and nodes based in Cairo (Egypt), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), and Weimar (Germany). It supports entrepreneurs through three main programs. The first, Startups of Africa, connects startup owners with mentors. It also fosters collaboration between startups to build a stronger ecosystem with more solid partnerships.
The second program is the Ladies Startups League, a program aimed at helping women-led startups validate their ideas and scale their businesses.
The last program is Startups of Alex, an incubation program launched to help develop startups and boost collaboration in the Alexandria startup ecosystem. The program is funded by Egypt's Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT).
Icealex has also launched initiatives such as the Makers of Alexandria project, which aims to highlight innovative trades that are on the verge of extinction. It organizes events such as Icebreakfast, a bimonthly gathering during which its community gathers over breakfast and exchanges knowledge on a variety of subjects.
Melchior Koba
Habaka aims to create a culture of innovation and technology in Madagascar. By supporting the development of tech talents, it wants to contribute to socio-economic development in the country.
Habaka - which means “space” in Malagasy is a technology innovation hub that supports a community of entrepreneurs, developers, and innovators. Formerly known as Malagasy i-Hub, it was initiated, in 2011, by independent Malagasy web players. It offers various services and programs to help the local tech community develop and flourish.
It has a modern, comfortable, and well-equipped coworking space, where tech workers can access the Internet, use various modern equipment, and meet others who share their interests and goals.
The innovation hub organizes and hosts events, like the Startup Weekend, Barcamp, Webcup, ICT cafés, etc., dedicated to entrepreneurship and technology. These events offer participants opportunities to learn new skills, share ideas, and network with experts and peers.
The hub offers training on various subjects, such as web development, digital marketing, graphic design, and entrepreneurship. It also runs a program called Coder Dojo, which teaches programming and creative problem-solving to young people.
Its fablab features a range of equipment, including a 3D printer and powerful computers to enable users to customize any object. These tools and accessories enable companies to prototype their products before mass production.
Habaka currently has five communities with thousands of members and counting. Its members work in various strategic sectors such as software engineering, machine learning, robotics, smart cities, astronomy, and game development, among others.
Since 2018, the hub has been nurturing a project to set up Hay Valley, the Malagasy equivalent of US Silicon Valley. With the help of its partners AfriLabs, Orange, GIZ, ArchiCONCEPT, Network Information Center Madagascar (NIC-MG), and the Centre d'innovation et de documentation scientifique et technique (CIDST), the hub has supported some 80 startups and delivered 70 practical training courses.
Melchior Koba
By allowing farmers access to technologies and adequate markets, he helps solve some of the key challenges facing Africa. Some of those challenges include food security, poverty, and unemployment.
Karidas Tshintsholo (photo) is the founder and CEO of Khula, a South African startup that provides a marketplace and software for farmers to grow their businesses.
The tech entrepreneur attended Ekangala Comprehensive High School from 2008 to 2012. He then studied business at the University of Cape Town from 2013 to 2015. Soon after that, in 2017, he founded Khula with Matthew Piper and Jackson Dyora.
His startup aims to provide a support ecosystem connecting farmers with buyers, technical services, financing, and inputs across Africa.
Khula’s digital platform is not only a fresh produce marketplace where farmers can list their products and buyers can place orders. It also serves as an input marketplace where growers can buy seeds, fertilizers, pesticides... from verified suppliers. Khula is also a traders' platform, where traders can source products from farmers and sell them to buyers. It offers a dashboard, where farmers can access financing options from a variety of lenders.
With over 100 suppliers, more than 130 warehouses, and more than 190 agricultural advisors in South Africa, it offers more than 3,000 products from local and international suppliers and can deliver to every province and major agricultural region in its origin country. Karidas Tshintsholo, the CEO who oversees its operations, is a member of the Southern Africa Council of the International Fresh Produce Association, an association representing companies in the global fresh produce and floral supply chain.
In 2013, the tech entrepreneur co-founded MoneyTree Group, a media, publishing, and marketing company focused on youth and emerging markets/segments of the economy. Till 2017, he served as the executive director of that company. From 2014 to 2015, he was the executive project manager of Investor Games, a gamified investing training platform created by Investment Society (InvestSoc.), the South African NGO that provides “holistic, business-focused practical education at every major tertiary institution in South Africa.”
Karidas Tshintsholo has received awards throughout his entrepreneurial journey. In 2015, he became a fellow of the Anzisha Prize, a fellowship of which he has been a member of the advisory board since 2021. In 2019, he was named among the Forbes Africa 30 Under 30.
Melchior Koba
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Kosala PME offers a range of services and programs designed to inspire and support budding and existing entrepreneurs in the Congo. The incubator and accelerator has already supported a multitude of projects and start-ups.
Kosala is a platform that aims to provide tailored support and financing to facilitate the creation and development of new businesses in the Republic of Congo. Founded in 2019 by Trésor Dexter Omono, a young Congolese entrepreneur and innovator, Kosala offers a range of services and programs to help entrepreneurs achieve their goals and dreams.
It offers incubation and acceleration programs for startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Through these services, it offers entrepreneurs coaching, mentoring, training, networking, and financing opportunities. It also organizes events and workshops to promote the culture of entrepreneurship and innovation in the country.
Kosala also offers co-working spaces. Through the Kosala Académie, the incubator helps its students acquire skills in various fields, including digital, management, and entrepreneurship. It enables entrepreneurs to domicile their startup at its address and to obtain tailor-made assistance with the administrative formalities involved in setting up a business.
The incubator also builds partnerships with various public and private institutions to support the digital ecosystem in Congo. For example, in July 2023 it signed a partnership agreement with the Agence de développement de l'économie numérique (ADEN CG) to promote digital inclusion, skills development, and job creation.
On its website, Kosala indicates that it currently supports 3,750 projects and has an 85% success rate.
Melchior Koba
Armelle Touko is a publisher who believes in the power of books to shape the minds and hearts of African children. With her daughter, she set up the digital publishing platform Adinkra Jeunesse, which offers African content to African children.
Armelle Touko (photo) is a Cameroonian-born author and publisher. She is the founder and managing partner of Adinkra Jeunesse, a digital platform offering unlimited access to African children's books. She aims to inspire and educate young readers with stories that reflect their culture.
The young publisher is a graduate of ESSTIC (Higher School of Information and Communication Sciences and Techniques (ESSTIC), where she obtained a master's degree in communications in 2007. She also holds a master's degree in marketing from ESSEC (Advanced School of Economics and Business), in 2014.
In 2018, she founded Adinkra Jeunesse with her then 10-year-old daughter Marie Gabrielle. The platform offers illustrated books, audio stories, games, coloring sheets, educational sheets, and parenting sheets in French, English, and local languages, for children aged 3 to 12.
Since 2021, Armelle Touko has been organizing writing workshops, through her 100 Petits Ecrivains program. The program aims to encourage children aged 6 to 14 to create stories on their own.
Armelle Touko is also the founder of Adinkra Femme, a collective of authors who write on subjects such as violence and women's empowerment.
She has professional experience in publishing, organizational communication, and behavior change communication. That professional career began in 2008 at Yaounde as an Editorial Manager. In 2010, she joined Alpha Assurances as Communications and Public Works Manager.
For more than five years, from 2015 to 2020, she worked as communications and social mobilization coordinator for the program for access to reproductive health services (PASSR) implemented in the Far North and East regions of Cameroon.
Armelle Touko's work has been celebrated by several awards, including the Label Innovation IFC 2022, which celebrates, supports, and promotes startups in the cultural and creative industries sector. She is also the winner of the 2023 edition of POESAM, which rewards innovative projects in education and social action in Africa.
Melchior Koba
In Kenya, Fablab Winam promotes manufacturing, research, and education. It offers designers, artists, scientists, engineers, and students an open-access laboratory to stimulate their creativity.
Fablab Winam is a material innovation and digital fabrication makerspace created in Kenya to enable people with creative ideas to come together to share solutions and tools for prototyping and startup incubation.
The lab was founded in 2018 by Martin Oloo, a former Fab Academy graduate. The founder is also the lab's managing director, overseeing its operations and partnerships. His vision is to create a culture of manufacturing, collaboration, and creativity, among other things, in the country.
Fablab Winam offers a range of services, including training in 2D and 3D printing, laser cutting, vinyl cutting, circuit production, fabrication, prototyping, mentoring, and consulting. It also organizes various programs to educate and inspire different groups of people.
The first is the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) Fab Kids program designed for children and early high school students. It offers virtual courses in Scratch programming, Arduino circuits and programming, web development (WordPress), and 2D and 3D modeling.
The next is the Fab Design Academy, which aims to improve the design skills of local manufacturers and producers to produce competitive items for the market. There's also the Jua Kali Plus project, which supports Jua Kali artisans (workers in the informal sector) to improve the quality of their products and produce spare parts locally.
Fablab Winam also organizes Fab Internships, a program that builds students' practical skills before sending them on internships with local companies. It is also the first Kenyan fablab outside Nairobi to host the Fab Academy, an online course on digital fabrication.
Fablab Winam also hosts monthly events such as International Youth Day, which teaches topics such as energy efficiency, sustainable agriculture, the circular economy, green building and design, water management, and much more.
In 2022, the fablab helped over 300 people and completed more than 100 projects. The lab has also received recognition and support from various organizations, such as AfriLabs, ICT Authority, Liquid Telecom, Africa Open Science Hardware, and Shuttleworth Foundation, among others.
Melchior Koba
Experienced in the banking and financial services sectors, he developed a passion for the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. This led to the creation of Wakanda 4.0, a digital transformation company, in 2020.
Benito Elisa (photo) is the founder and CEO of Wakanda 4.0, a digital transformation company offering consulting, software development, training, business development, conference organization, graphic design, and video creation. He is also a seasoned professional with extensive experience in the banking and financial sectors.
The Mauritian-born entrepreneur holds a Bachelor's degree in Banking Law and International Finance, obtained in 2010 from the Mauritius University of Technology. He is also a graduate of the University of Mauritius, where he obtained a master's degree in marketing operations for personal and financial business services in 2013.
In 2020, when he launched Wakanda 4.0 Ltd, his vision was to become the most trusted digital partner to the Web 3.0 industry in the African and Middle Eastern regions. He also wanted to promote innovation and education on the African continent, where he believes there is enormous potential for growth and development.
Vice-Chairman of the Africa Emerging Tech Hub, Benito Elisa is also the founder and CEO of Fluffy Goodies, an e-commerce platform for personalized treats. He is also the official representative of Gulf Xellence, an event management and professional training company, in Mauritius.
A lecturer on fintech innovations at the Mauritius University of Technology, he is also an advisor to Nurika, a Nigerian AI-powered platform dedicated to promoting healthy lifestyles as well as encouraging the adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
Between 2010 and 2015, he worked as Bramer Bank's private banking relationship manager, and in the following two years, he was the financial services advisor to the Mauritian Ministry of Financial Services and Good Governance.
An alumnus of the La Plage Factory incubator, Benito Elisa is a winner of the 2022 edition of Africa's Most Respected CEO Awards for digital solutions in the blockchain and virtual assets industry.
Melchior Koba