Airbus and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) have announced the top 10 African tech start-ups that will take part in the latest Airbus Bizlab #Africa4Future accelerator programme. They were selected after an open public pitch event in front of experts, potential investors, the media and other stakeholders.
The finalists are Astral Aerial (Kenya) selected for using drones for humanitarian cargo transport, surveillance and emergency response; Cote d’Ivoire drone (Ivory Coast) selected for locally-manufactured drones for various applications; Elemental Numerics (South Africa) selected for applying computational fluid dynamics techniques to the design of machines and components, ranging from aircraft to heart valves.
Others are Lentera Limited (Kenya), Maisha ICT Tech PLC (Ethiopia), MamaBird (Malawi), Map Action (Mali), MobiTech Water Solutions (Kenya), Track Your Build (Nigeria), and WiPo Wireless Power (South Africa).
#Africa4Future is a joint business accelerator initiative of Airbus and GIZ’s Make-IT in Africa initiative together with the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), a non-profit seed fund and pan-African organisation that brings together startups, entrepreneurs and the tech community, and Innocircle, the South African-based innovation consultancy.
The programme aims to encourage and support entrepreneurship in Africa. The continent’s young and increasingly techno-savvy population is likely to be the driving force behind Africa’s socio-economic development. The competition identifies Africa’s own pool of talented entrepreneurs using innovative aerospace based solutions to tackle the continent’s most pressing challenges such as transportation, agriculture and healthcare.
As a global aerospace accelerator, Airbus BizLab is ideally suited to help African startups transform innovative ideas into viable and valuable businesses. In doing so, it increases the aerospace industry’s engagement with hardware and software innovators and entrepreneurs in Africa while helping to nurture the establishment of competitive entrepreneurial ecosystems on the continent.
The Nairobi event kicks off an intensive 6-month business incubation and accelerator programme involving technical, commercial and mentorship activities in France, Germany and South Africa. This includes workshops and coaching sessions with Airbus experts, GIZ’s Make-IT in Africa, MEST and Innocircle coaches.
Photo caption: Participants at the Airbus Bizlab #Africa4Future event in Nairobi, Kenya, recently