African online business platform Afribiz, which will this year roll out accelerator programmes in South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Nigeria, and Kenya, has signed a strategic partnership with the Charlotte Research Institute to support its economic development interventions.
The partnership between Afribiz and the Charlotte Research Institute, which is located at the University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC), will provide Afribiz with an “extensive regional and international ecosystem”, while the organisation will also move its United States (US) headquarters into the UNCC’s business partnership building next month.
“We are pleased the Charlotte Research Institute has welcomed us into their family as a business partner. Our informal relationship with different parts of the university has been a key ingredient to our success to date. We are very excited to have this relationship formalised and look forward to building a greater economic future for Charlotte and Africa,” said Lauri Elliott, executive director of the Afribiz Foundation.
Elliott said being a part of the community will enable Afribiz to synergise efforts in its ecosystem. Afribiz will also open the Charlotte Africa Business, Investment, and Trade (CABIT) Hub in September at the Charlotte Africa Business Week.
CABIT and Afribiz will provide research, technical, strategy, and partnership assistance to US firms, non-profits, and government agencies which need a greater reach and assistance in navigating and implementing in Africa. These units will be paired with Afribiz’s regional hubs in Africa – located in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, DRC, Cameroon and Morocco – to provide the needed support.
The US Afribiz units will also support the efforts of the Africa regional hubs to assist governments and companies in Africa with US ecosystems, partnerships, technical support, project and venture development, funding, and trade and investment missions to the US.
“The Afribiz Foundation is establishing a separate member organisation that will support its African members with strategy, partnership and alliance development, and resourcing services through US and European ecosystems using Afribiz’s unique ecosystem and relationships,” Afribiz said.
Disrupt Africa reported last month Afribiz announced the launch of its accelerator programme, which is set for initial rollout in South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Nigeria, and Kenya in the third quarter of this year.
The organisation aims to establish a network of “lifecycle” accelerators that support entrepreneurs, startups and SMEs across the African continent.
“We are very excited about this programme because we have waited a long while to build a robust, comprehensive model that fills in some of the critical gaps in entrepreneurial ecosystems in Africa,” said Elliott.
“There are a lot of great incubators and accelerators already but they are more or less targeted in a very defined niche, we want to take an ecosystem approach and see how we can leverage ecosystems to support ventures from idea, to seed, to startup, to growth.”
The programmes that will be made available through Afribiz Accelerators initially include two programmes – Venture Acceleration Bootcamp and Venture Cultivation Launchpad. The bootcamp targets entrepreneurs from the idea to seed stage, while the Cultivation Launchpad targets the seed to growth stages of ventures.
