The AFRISE Challenge provides an opportunity for high potential African youth and student entrepreneurs to rise up in their entrepreneurial journey, and contribute to local and regional economic development by becoming job creators.
Concordia University and Hindsight Ventures have partnered for this program, with a central theme focusing on how youth entrepreneurs can help “African” economies to “Rise”.
The program is aimed at 18 - 35 year old African youth. We are looking for applications from Nigeria, Uganda, Morocco, Kenya and Senegal. AFRISE seeks to identify young innovators and entrepreneurs who have a scalable idea to solve a mass challenge.
We are looking for enterprising youth (as individuals or teams) who are solving for, but not limited to below:
30 high-potential founders will be selected for a mentorship and leadership development accelerator, that will be delivered by successful founders, industry leaders, domain experts and investors; alongside leaders from Concordia University, District 3 Innovation Centre, Hindsight Ventures and AfriLabs global network.
The Accelerator Program will culminate with an International Demo Day, wherein the Top-15 Entrepreneurs present at a Virtual Demo Day to a group of early stage venture investors and Entrepreneurship Support Organizations for accessing funding support (grant + equity based funding)
Each startup gets in excess of $600,000 in technology credits from partners such as AWS, Zoho, IBM, Microsoft, Canva, DigitalOcean, FreshWorks and more.
5 Youth Entrepreneurs get selected for a 1-Week International Market Exposure.
AFRISE Challenge will be adjudicated by a jury of prominent leaders from Concordia University, District 3 Innovation Centre and Hindsight Ventures, bringing in their deep domain expertise.