Ten scale-ups from Africa and the Middle East have been selected to take part in the inaugural “Accelerate with Djembe” programme, which will help startups raise funds by boosting their communications abilities.
Djembe Consultants is pan-African and Middle Eastern communications consultancy with a mission to become the communications partner of choice in the MEA region by combining global expertise, local market capabilities, and customised solutions to deliver best-in-class services to clients.
Accelerate with Djembe is a communications-focused accelerator programme for scale-ups in Africa and the Middle East, which supports the selected scale-ups’ efforts to raise funds by providing access to communications insight and advisory services.
After a selection process led by Djembe CEO Mitchell Prather, 10 scale-ups across various sectors, including education, energy, environmental services, healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation, have been selected to take part.
Three of the ventures are from Kenya, namely Baobab Circle, Bevis Africa, and Mzuri Organics. Nigeria (Cabax Farms and Lustre Plastics) and Ghana (SolarTaxi and Stemaide Africa) have two representatives each.
The cohort is completed by Egypt’s Saving System, alongside the DUS Sustainability Research Centre from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and YY ReGen from Lebanon.
These ventures will engage in Djembe’s intensive communications training, focused on messaging, branding, digital marketing, investor relations, crisis communications, media relations, partnership building, and other critical communication disciplines. Furthermore, additional outside industry experts will support the further development of the inaugural cohort group, ensuring they are investment-ready with a powerful growth story.
“The Djembe Consultants team was impressed with the quality of scale-ups who applied during the two months-long application process. The MEA region has proven once again that it has the potential to lead the next global revolution through innovation, and we remain committed to playing a pivotal role in providing MEA innovators with much-needed support. Accelerate with Djembe is designed with storytelling at its core, and we are excitingly looking forward to further developing and promoting the stories of these amazing scale-ups to potential funders and investors,” said Prather.
Accelerate with Djembe will kick off in August and run until November.
