NAIROBI, 3rd June 2021
GrowthAfrica, Africa’s leading Entrepreneurship Support Organisation, kicked off its flagship Accelerator programme 33rd Cohort on 2nd June 2021. The cohort features 70 exceptional SME Ventures from across Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Ghana selected from over 1,000 applicants. Industries represented by the ventures include agribusiness, education, ICT, mobile solutions, tech-enabled businesses, financial services and fintech, renewable energy, water & sanitation, health, retail, manufacturing/processing, last-mile distribution and e-commerce.
The past year has seen the business environment and economies become adversely affected globally and Africa in particular. The resultant economic shifts and realities have also introduced new opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop, improve and connect, enhancing real-time cross country peer to peer engagements. The GrowthAfrica Accelerator is designed to help strengthen analytical skills & enhanced self-audit capabilities, a keen understanding of economic realities, craft effective strategies & solutions and equips SME founders with extensive resources to accelerate their growth into high potential African businesses for economic revival in a post-pandemic world.
“We believe that to create a successful business, entrepreneurs need strengthened access to expert knowledge and broad networks, which are core to improving their entrepreneurial acumen. This is achieved through building their analytical skills, self-auditing, leadership and ability articulation of operational gaps and challenges.” Said Johnni Kjelsgaard, CEO GrowthAfrica.
The GrowthAfrica Accelerator programme that connects SMEs from five African countries has become more relevant to Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). The program will prepare SMEs to take advantage of the AfCFTA through:
- Growth strategy – strengthening and empowering SMEs to understand all the nuances of their businesses internally and through a detailed process to equip them with a clear growth strategy.
- Investor readiness – preparing and equipping SMEs with appropriate skills to position them for investments. GrowthAfrica provides a wide network of investors who come in search of investment-ready and worthy companies.
- Connectivity –providing an avenue for SMEs to connect to a group of peers within GrowthAfrica’s countries of operations. This also involves access to other markets within their Economic regions and/or other parts of Africa.
- Exposure – through its wide reach across Africa, GrowthAfrica offers its SMEs access to different networks and offers market intelligence for expansion across different African markets.
Learn more about GrowthAfrica’s accelerator and meet previous cohorts
https://growthafrica.com/accelerator/
About GrowthAfrica
GrowthAfrica is a leading African accelerator and advisory firm delivering growth activities programmes for impactful African ventures. Since running the first accelerator programme in 2012, GrowthAfrica has accelerated more than 250 African ventures. From its inception in 2002, GrowthAfrica has worked with over 2,000 growing African businesses, which have been supported in raising over USD 70 million in investments, loans and grants, and created more than 30,000 jobs in Africa. GrowthAfrica provides business growth programs for high-potential entrepreneurs as well as design and delivers activities for partners and clients in support of entrepreneurs. GrowthAfrica currently has offices in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi, and Ghana. For more info: www.growthafrica.com
For more information on the accelerator programme and more news items, please write to the Communications Lead Liz Kariuki on eka@growthafrica.com or call +254 (0) 735 283 462
