Week 9: Funding and Grant Opportunities for African Startups

Google for Startups Black Founders Fund 2023

The Black Founders Fund is a product of Google’s Financial Support initiative for early stage Black/Latino founded startups across Africa, America and Europe.

This iteration of the program primarily focuses on black founders in Africa. In addition to providing equity free cash awards (up to $150,000 per startup), it aims to expose the participants to several other benefits like

Benefits: Access to $200k in Google Cloud credits, leadership training and hands-on support through custom membership, founders network with opportunity to meet and learn from peers, mentorship, leadership group sessions and 1:1 with Google teams, roundtable discussions with leading VCs and industry experts.

Application Deadline: March 26, 2023

Apply here

Project Innovation to Market Program

Project I2M (innovation to market) aims to create an integrated support system for a sustainable innovation ecosystem in Nigeria by deploying resources for nurturing innovations at different stages to market-product fit.

The project supported by the UK’s Research and Innovation Systems for Africa (RISA) intends to onboard researchers and innovators to create a self-sustaining incubator program wherein startup founders can grow their ventures into bankable businesses and attract significant investments.

Benefits: Training to grow your innovation to product-market fit,  prototyping & startup funding, intellectual property protection filing, full support for linking product to the industry,

Application Deadline: March 30, 2023

Apply here

Sterling HEART Fellowship

The Sterling HEART Fellowship is an initiative of Sterling Bank, Nigeria aimed at investing in and nurturing the dreams of young Nigerian founders by affording them opportunities to be part of the Founder Institute Lagos Pre-Seed Accelerator Program.

The program recognizes and awards founders whose ideas provide innovative solutions to challenges in the Health, Education, Agriculture, Renewable Energy and Transportation sectors.

The primary criteria to qualify for this opportunity passing the Entrepreneur DNA test; an assessment exercise used to identify individuals possessing the skills and traits conducive to entrepreneurship

Benefits: Access to Funding with opportunities through the FI Venture Network, expert feedback from experienced founders and investors, leverage a proven growth structure for building fundable startups.

Application Deadline: September 16, 2023

Learn more

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