Tech giant Google has announced 60 qualifiers for the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund (BFF) for African startups.
The startups selected for the 2nd cohort will benefit from a total of $4 million in funding and support to enable them to scale up their ongoing work.
There are 12 Kenyan startups on the list, while Nigeria has the highest number of beneficiaries with 23 startups. South Africa, Uganda, Botswana, Rwanda, Ghana, Ethiopia and Senegal are all represented as well.
“Africa is a diverse continent with massive opportunity but the continent is faced with the challenge of limited diversity in venture capital funding flow. We hope that the Black Founders Fund program will be able to bridge the gap of disproportionate funding between expat startups over local and black-led companies.”, says Folarin Aiyegbusi, Head of Startup Ecosystem, at Google Africa.
The Google for Startups program was introduced in 2012 and has reportedly created 4,600 jobs and raised more than $290M in funding.
The startups selected to join the program will benefit from Google’s products, connections and best practices to give founders an upper hand as they build better products and services for the African economy.
“The equity-free cash assistance to startups will enable them to take care of immediate needs such as paying staff, funding inventory, and maintaining software licences. This is to help the grantees buffer the cost of taking on debt in the early stages of their business as many do not have steady revenue streams yet”, Aiyegbusi said.
The 2022 grantees comprise 50% women-led startups (an improvement from the 40% last year).
Kenya startups that qualified for the 2022 BFF are:
- Ajua (Social commerce)
- Buupass (Logistics)
- DohYangu (Fintech)
- Flexpay (Fintech)
- Keep It Cool (Agritech)
- Leja (Fintech)
- Solutech (Marketing)
- Synnefa (Agritech)
- TIBU Health (Healthtech)
- TopUp Mama (Food logistics and fintech)
- Zanifu (Fintech)
- Zuri Health (HealthTech)
Representation by country is as follows :
- Nigeria (23)
- Kenya (12)
- Rwanda (6)
- South Africa (5)
- Uganda (4)
- Cameroon (3)
- Ghana (3)
- Ethiopia (2)
- Botswana and Senegal have one selected startup each.
Each selected startup will receive $100,000 in capital, an additional $200K in Google Cloud Credits, and access to the best of Google—people, products, and practices.
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