The Tech African Women (TAW) program Thursday concluded its Bootcamp and pitch competition, with eight female-led and idea-stage tech startups progressing to the finals.
The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and Betacube launched the program last August, with an objective to support female-led tech startups from Ethiopia, Senegal, Tanzania, and Tunisia from the idea stage into real-world operations.
The program, involving 3 main phases, has now entered its incubation stage after a series of Bootcamp and pitch competition concluded successfully, ECA said in a statement.
The Bootcamp engaged a total of 74 women participants selected out of 338 applicants, 12 finalists, and 8 projects from the four targeted countries all selected by a local jury panel.
“The outcome of the competition showed that African women are beyond ready to tackle the socio-economic issues of the continent with tech ideas encircling strategic areas such as optimization of agriculture outputs and enhancing health education,” said the ECA.
The first stage of the TAW initiative focused on 3 days of tailored workshops with key skills introduced to inspire the entrepreneurs and prepare them for the pitching competition.
The Bootcamp mainly included training on market analysis, team building, lean startup methodology, and project pitching with relevance to UN Sustainable Development Goals as the final project selection criteria along with market size potential, the extent of innovation, and scalability of the idea.
The first and second place best start-up ideas of each of the pitching competitions hosted on the third day of each city boot camp won a ticket to get access to a 2-month equity free incubation program and a fully funded trip to Addis Ababa for the final ceremony.
The second stage of the program, which is the incubation phase, will be focusing on leading the startups to the investment-readiness level with a fully functioning MVP, according to the organizers of the Program.
The founders will have the support of experts in Market research, Product Management, Branding, Pitching, and Finance.
At the end of the incubation program, the eight startups will get to showcase and pitch the projects to which they’re dedicating their time and effort.
MG/abj/APA