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Join us for the African Start-up Investment Summit
MandyP
Community Coordinator

Are you an early-stage entrepreneur? If so, join us for this 3-part webinar series that unpacks hard-won lessons and insights from innovative African start-ups and investors.

 

Start-ups will lead Africa’s charge through the Covid-19 crisis, but do they have the support they need? 

 

In a world that is experiencing accelerated change due to Covid-19, start-ups have the ability to find innovative solutions to even the most unexpected and pressing challenges. But they need the right support from investors and experienced founders.

 

That’s why Standard Bank has partnered with Founders Factory Africa as the lead investor to support Africa’s start-up community and to fuel the development of innovative tech start-ups and support the creation of jobs across the continent.

 

Larry McCarthy, Head of Strategic Investments & Alliances at Standard Bank, frames the importance of funding in fostering dynamic start-up communities: “If one looks at the countries in Africa starting to succeed new business ecosystems, the key to success is creating a fertile funding environment for early-stage entrepreneurs to access funding.”

 

Founders Factory Africa is a venture development company that believes innovative technology has the power to truly drive change. The African start-up ecosystem has a history of showing extreme resilience and rising to meet challenging times. And in particular, the Founders Factory Africa team and its portfolio of tech start-ups is focused on a collective effort to develop technology that supports efforts in responding to the Covid-19 crisis.

 

The Covid-19 crisis presents risk and opportunity.

 

The problem is that as economies face the harsh ramifications of a slowdown in trade, early-stage entrepreneurs and start-ups are most affected by the resultant liquidity crisis.

These are the innovative start-ups and entrepreneurs that are most likely going to lead the collective charge out of the Covid-19 economic crisis. Their agility and ability to quickly deliver required responses to growing market needs necessitates a responsibility to enable these efforts.

 

According to Sarah Dusek, general partner at Enygma Ventures and panelist in the first African Start-up Investment Summit webinar, the Covid-19 pandemic also presents opportunities: “This is a fundamentally huge moment in time with many shifts: it will impact how we travel, how we spend and what we can and can’t do. And these impacts may last forever.

 

“We choose to see an opportunity to see change and drive change to fundamentally move into a new way of living and doing business and in being human. But the question must then be asked: How do we invest and focus money on solutions that will help us shift into a new world?

 

“This is Africa’s opportunity to leapfrog into our own destiny, take advantage of the current global conditions and solve problems that we haven’t been able to solve in generations. We can stop playing catch up to the world and become leaders instead,” says Dusek.

 

The African Start-up Investment Summit.

 

Founders Factory Africa, in collaboration with AfricArena, is hosting the African Start-up Investment Summit.

This summit was designed in response to these critical start-up challenges and to address both the short-term capital constraint in the early-stage African investment market and the more general pause on investor engagement.

 

The summit comprises a 3-part webinar series and is focused on:

 

  • How to better equip founders and investors with the relevant resources to operate in the new post-Covid environment, and to stimulate a relevant, collaborative dialogue around these issues.
  • Adopting a free market platform that facilitates early-stage African investment, by matching capital demand with relevant supply.
  • Utilising a newly formed repository of online resources for founders.
  • Facilitating more efficient deal execution through a reduced need for legal/administrative friction, by adopting standardised documents.
  • Educating the market on alternative financing tools such as venture debt and crowdfunding.

 

Register now for upcoming webinars

 

Leverage a unique opportunity to engage and participate in a debate that could shape South Africa’s ability to weather a Covid-19 world:

 

Webinar 1:

 

  • Topic: A resilient African start-up ecosystem
  • Two founders and two investors unpack the African start-up ecosystem, and what measures are (or not) working.
  • Watch: Click here to watch a recording of the session.

 

Webinar 2:

 

  • Topic: Investing in the current environment
  • A discussion around the short-term measures to facilitate necessary investment in market-leading ventures of the future. We will also hear from a few start-up founders who are acting quickly to respond to the current situation.
  • Watch: Click here to watch a recording of the session.

 

Webinar 3:

 

  • Topic: A more efficient investment framework in Africa
  • Date: 7 May at 3pm
  • Long-term, sustainable interventions to stimulate African early stage investing from the continent’s top institutional investors and enablers.
  • Watch: Click here to watch a recording from the session.
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