This list highlights accelerators that can be found in Kenya.

1. Tumi

Tumi (Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative) is a Nairobi-based mobility startup accelerator. It provides technical support to startups that aim to curb urban mobility challenges.  Selected startups are additionally incubated at C4DLab at the University of Nairobi. Its portfolio include ride-hailing, van pooling and truck-hailing startups such as An Nisa, Auto-truck, GetBoda and Twende.

2. GrowthAfrica

This is one of the oldest accelerators in Kenya, having been founded in 2002. Though headquartered in Nairobi, it has offices in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Zambia as well. It focuses primarily on growing post-revenue African startups  and SMEs through business acceleration, strategic advice and access to investments. Additionally, it helps local and international organizations support African ventures.

3. Pangea Accelerator

This is a Norway-based accelerator which aims to help African startups access investment. Initially, its African chapter was hosted by Strathmore University through a partnership with iLab. Some notable Kenyan startups to go through Pangea´s programme include Biasharabot, Onesha, Yusudi and Tozzaplus.

4. Ygap Kenya Accelerator

This is an initiative of Ygap Kenya, which is an international not-for-profit organization whose aim is to support local changemakers through funding and training. The accelerator has teams in Kenya and South Africa and supports early stage impact entrepreneurs. It also claims to have run 44 programs, supporting 515 ventures.

5. E4Impact Accelerator

This is an accelerator founded by E4Impact Foundation, which is backed by the Italian Agency for Development Co-operation. It aims to catalyse business growth through its service offering which includes training, coaching and mentoring, market linkages and other professional services. It additionally offers seed grants as well as a co-working space for its entrepreneurs. The accelerator also serves as a link between Kenyan innovators and Italian businesses.

6. Sheltertech Accelerator Kenya

Sheltertech was launched in 2018 as a collaborative effort between the Terwilliger Center for Innovation and Shelter and iBiz Africa, Pangea Accelerator, Hilti Foundation, Ikea Foundation and LBDO. The accelerator facilitated a 6 month program which was concluded in May 2019. It provided access to investments, networks and business support to startups in the building and construction space. Some startups in its first cohort included AHomes, Gjenge Makers and ManPro.

7. EO Accelerator Programme

This programme was launched in 2018 by the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Kenya. It seeks to support early-stage entrepreneurs who are keen on reaching a USD 1 Mn turnover threshold. Entrepreneurs should additionally have a turnover of between USD 250 K to USD 1Mn.

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1. C4DLab

Founded in 2013, C4D Lab doubles up as research and development center as well as incubator and is housed by the School of Computing and Informatics, Univesristy of Nairobi. It is also home to Nairobi Innovation Week, an event where innovators showcase their products.

2. iBizAfrica

Hosted by Strathmore University, iBizAfrica carries out the entrepreneurship and incubation theme of iLab Africa, a research and innovation center at the university. It has so far incubated over 300 startups including ValuRaha, Buymore and Tatu Creatives just to name a few. Additionally, iBiz offers a co-working space at the university´s student center.

3. Villgro

With a specific focus in the healthcare center, Villgro is an early stage business incubator that also serves as an impact investor supporting startups with a global health impact in the East African region. The incubator has housed notable healthtech startups such as Ilara Health, Turaco, Flare, Maisha Meds and many more.

4. FabLab

Hosted by the University of Nairobi and also known as the Fabrication Laboratory, FabLab is a small-scale workshop that offers digital fabrication. It is part of a network of´FabLabs´that were started at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

5. iHub

Acquired by Nigeria´s innovation centre and seed fund CcHub in 2019, iHub was started in 2010 by Erik Hersmann. iHub is one of the most prominent incubators in Kenya, which supports African tech startups.  Some startups that have been housed by iHub include Majik Water and M-Shule.

6. mLab East Africa

Officially launched at iHub, mLab is a consortium of four organizations that aim to identify, nurture and help build sustainable enterprises. The four include: eMobilis offering education and training, World Wide Web Foundation offering curriculum content, The University of Nairobi School of Computing and Informatics  offering research and iHub for community interaction.

7. Cisco EDGE Incubation Centre

This is USD 680,000 incubation hub set up by the networking hardware company Cisco, with the aim of speeding up market access for SMEs in the ICT sector as well as imparting knowledge. The 2019-founded hub is also hosted by the University of Nairobi and is the second to be launched in Africa, after another one was launched in South Africa in 2018.

8. GrowthHub

This is an early-stage impact incubator and accelerator. It has two keynote programmes; the Idea-to-Innovation and the Innovation-to-Impact programmes. Through these programmes, entrepreneurs have access to seed funding of up to USD 100,000 apart from mentorship and networking opportunities. It´s portfolio includes startups such as Farm Lease and Kiara Agro.

9. NaiLab

Founded in 2010, the Nairobi-based incubator aims to lower market entry barriers for tech entrepreneurs. It additionally offers acceleration and training programmes and claims to have worked with over 16,000 African entrepreneurs. NaiLab has had startups such as Kejahunt and Tusqee in its portfolio.

10. LakeHub

Located in Kisumu, LakeHub is an innovation hub that targets early stage startups in the circular and shared economy, though not necessarily tech startups. After its 6 months incubation programme dubbed LakeHub Incubation, three most promising startups receive USD 5K  for further idea development.

11. KIRDI

The Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI) is a national research institute that offers both virtual and in-house incubation services to startups for 6 months.

12. The Hub East Africa

Also known as The Entrepreneur´s Hub, this incubator seeks to support startups and SME to start, grow and scale their enterprises. It offers a six month programme dubbed ´hubcubation´ where businesses between one to three years old are eligible for training, mentorship, strategy development among other services. Some companies that have gone through the incubator include Cloud9, Lapid Leaders Africa, RideSafe among others.

13. MEST Incubator

The Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) is a Pan-African tech incubator as well a seed fund. Started in Accra, Ghana in 20018, MEST trains, supports and invests in African software entrepreneurs. It additionally offers a one-year entrepreneurial training program. It operates from three centers, MEST Accra, MEST Lagos and MEST Nairobi and claims to have invested in nearly 60 early stage companies, some of them including TechShelta, Profish, MeQasa among others.

14. Chandaria Business Innovation and Incubation Center

The Chandaria-BIIC was launched by Kenyatta University, with aid from the Chandaria Foundation. Its main aim is to support the emergence of innovative companies, by offering a place that merges academic research and innovation. The agreement of its establishment is that it would support budding entrepreneurs, 70% of whom are Kenyatta University Students and 30% of whom are not in the institution. Startups that have gone through the center´s twelve month incubation programme include FlexPay and Ecodudu.

15. KeKoBi

Kenya Kountry Business Incubators (KeKoBi) originally started out in 2004 as a live software development business incubator but later evolved to allow mixed use incubation. Working with the Ministry of Trade and Industry, it supports SMEs and foster entrepreneurship at the local level. It also claims to have incubated over 20 companies.

16. Mara Launchpad Incubation Center

The center was started by the Mara Foundation, which is a social enterprise that focuses on emerging African entrepreneurs. It is active in Uganda. Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria. The incubation center offers entrepreneurs mentorship, funding, a workspace and business training.

We’re all about information sharing. If you’re an incubator and have not been included in the list, please feel free to reach out to us at editor@weetracker.com to have your incubator added!

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Players in e-commerce like Jumia have dominated the African space and it even went public earlier this year. Others include Takealot, which was acquired by Naspers, Konga and Bidorbuy. International brands like Amazon and Aliexpress have also turned their eye to Africa.

However, the e-commerce space has been riddled with a couple of challenges ranging from facing a large unbanked population, to lack of payment options in a number of countries.

Jumia too has seen challenges of its own post IPO. It has since shut down its offices in Cameroon and Tanzania and has even recently laid off some of its Kenyan workers in a downsizing move.

Despite this, Jumia remains a major player in Kenya, dominating the e-commerce scene. Others e-commerce marketplaces include in this scene include Sky.Garden, Kilimall, MallForAfrica Jiji, My Big Order, Masoko, Ubuy, Shopit, Cheki, Mama Mikes and Electro Hub.

Although they offer a variety of options of consumer goods, they have one thing in common; they focus primarily on users who have access to the internet, often the middle to the upper-income class who are located in urban areas.

However, the tier 2-3 towns and rural areas of Kenya is still not doing commerce online, yet they represent a larger market than the urban middle demographic. Meanwhile, there are a few innovative solutions and VC backed startups that are trying to tap the unbanked and low-middle income population.

One of them is Copia, an m-commerce company, delivering consumer goods to rural and urban areas of Kenya, with the help of its network of local agents.

The company claims to have more than 5000 agents spread across central and western Kenya. An agent carries a smart device, through which a Copia customer can browse a product catalogue and place an order. Copia claims to deliver products within 2-4 days to the agent’s location, which then can be picked by the customer. Orders can also be placed via USSD, through Copia’s website or by placing direct calls to Copia’s customer care agents.

“Players have brought in a western model and tried to superimpose it on the African market,” says Tim Steel, CEO of Copia.

These e-commerce companies often target urban dwellers who have internet access. This often leaves out low-middle income urban and rural dwellers who lack a variety of options of consumer goods to choose from as compared to their urban counterparts.

“With 750 million people in the middle to low – income bracket in Africa, there exists a USD 680 Bn market,” adds Tim.

Having a different approach and model, Copia certainly didn’t have much trouble wooing global investors. The startup has so far raised USD 38 million and recently announced the closure of its Series B round of USD 26 Mn. 

With Copia carving out a new path for itself, we can only wait to see how well its model will do in Kenya and the rest of Africa.

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The Lagos-based startup will use the acquired funding to scale in Nigeria as well as expand its payments products to Kenya, Ghana and South Africa.

Opera CFO Frode Jacobsen also disclosed that the funding will go into expansion into more African countries apart from those disclosed. He added that though not a priority, OPay seeks to capture volume in its bill payments and airtime purchases services.

“That’s not something you do ever day. We want to focus our services on things that have high-frequency usage,” said Jacobsen.

OPay through its mobile application serves as a one-stop-shop facilitating money transfers, payments for goods, bills and other daily services such as grocery delivery and transportation, airtime purchase and top-ups of accounts.

“Opay will facilitate the people in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya and other African countries with the best fintech ecosystem. We see ourselves as a key contributor to helping local businesses thrive from digital business models,” Opera CEO and OPay Chairman Yahui Zhou, said in a statement.

This funding comes after Opay had raised USD 50 Mn earlier this year, from Sequoia Capital, IDG Capital, Source Code Capital, Meituan-Dianping, GSR Ventures and Opera Limited.

OPay is also just one of the digital businesses under Opera. The software company launched other businesses such as ride-hailing app ORide, food delivery service OFood and OLeads, a promotional tool for SMEs.

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The funding was channeled through Tecno, Transsion’s subsidiary, with participation from one of the largest internet and video game companies in the world, NetEase and chip manufacturer, MediaTek.

The amount was used to launch PalmPay in Nigeria, following a pilot program and subsequent acquisition of a license as a mobile money operator in July from the Central Bank of Nigeria. Additionally, the funding will also go into expansion of the startup’s financial services in Ghana.

Reportedly, the move to launch in Nigeria was made in a bid to become the largest financial services platform in Africa.

Speaking to TechCrunch, PalmPay CEO Greg Reeves who formerly led the M-Pesa division for Vodafone, revealed that there were plans to expand to other African countries in 2020.

PalmPay, through its application allows mobile money transfer at no cost, bill payments and airtime purchase. Users also earn rewards from using the application.

As part of the deal, PalmPay will partner with mobile phone manufacturers under Transsion – Tecno, Itel and Infinix, where the startup’s application will be pre-installed on 20 million mobile phones in 2020, as reported by TechCrunch.

Transsion is however not the only major company to seal a deal with PalmPay. In April this year, the startup went into a partnership with multinational financial services corporation, Visa. This was to increase financial inclusion by offering customers a digital wallet to facilitate offline and online top up of funds.

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The round is reportedly the first external investment secured by the Cairo-based startup.

Founded in 2018 by Karim Khashaba, Sherief El-Feky and Yasser AbdelGawad, Yodawy allows users to place orders, through a mobile application, for their medicines by uploading a photo of their prescriptions. Alternatively, users can get their medicines by using the platform’s in built search engine which will recognize the needed drug even with incorrect spellings entered. After placing the order, Yodawy works with a network of over 250K partner pharmacies close to the users, to have the medicines delivered.

Yodawy has additionally partnered with insurance providers and submits claims on behalf of the users. The medication if eligible, is then sent to the partner pharmacies, if the claim is approved.

Commenting on the occassion, Karim Khashaba, Yodawy’s co-Founder and CEO identified the incredible opportunity that lies in the pharmacy benefits and claims processing space.

“It’s an established business model in different parts of the world, with no real solution in the region. Consumers and insurance companies alike are absolutely desperate for a better value proposition. The region has come a long way over the past couple of years, but we still believe very little is being done to address deeper infrastructure gaps. This is where Yodawy is looking to create real impact,” he added.

Emad Fouad, the Managing Director of CVentures said, “Yodawy has the potential to become a leading digital pharmacy benefits platform in the region. It’s clear go-to-market addresses fundamental problems experienced by pharmacies, insurance companies and their respective customers, effectively adding significant value to all stakeholders. CVentures is excited at the prospect of working closely with Yodawy, and we look forward to helping the Founders achieve their vision and roll-out of additional innovative offerings.”

The investment is one of the several investments made by Algebra Ventures this year, after injecting funds into startups such as Trella, Orcas Solutions, Goodsmart and Dsquares.

Speaking on the funding, Karim Hussein, Managing Partner at Algebra Ventures said, “Yodawy has a very promising team that is led by an experienced and resilient entrepreneur with strong product passion and an ability to attract good talent.”

“With their vision, strategy and the outstanding progress Yodawy has been able to deliver outstanding results in their first year of operations, Algebra is truly excited about this opportunity and confident in Yodawy’s ability to lead the digital transformation of the Healthcare sector in Egypt and the MENA region,” he added.

Notably, Yodawy is not the only Egyptian healthtech startup to raise a significant amount of funding in 2019. In August this year, Chefaa had raised a six-figure sum in a seed round led by 500 Startups.

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The competition dubbed VentureClash is a USD 5 Mn global venture challenge for early-stage startups and is managed by Connecticut Innovations. It brings together tech-enabled startups from the sectors healthtech, insurtech, fintech and Internet of Things (IoT) to compete for investment, mentorship, introduction to customers among other things.

The startup scooped the top position in a live pitch event at Yale University against nine other startups where three were from the US, four from Israel and two from Canada. Pineapple had been declared a finalist in the USD 5 Mn competition last month. It was also the only African startup to reach the finals, having been selected from a pool of 300 startups that applied from twenty countries around the world.

Matthew Elan Smith, a co-founder at the startup expressed how they had been excited just to be in the top ten, terming their competitors as ‘truly amazing companies.’

“We are extremely humbled by this award and too grateful to everyone who has helped us along the way. From the Hannover Re Group in SA, Compass Insure, ASISA ESD Fund managed by Edge Growth, as well as the people of Connecticut who have received us with open arms, especially the teams at StartupBootCamp, Travelers, CTi and Nassau Re, to name a few,” Elan added.

The startup will reportedly use the prize money to develop its motor insurance product that has been in the works and is set to launch in six months. Part of the funds could also go into venturing into the US market, as talks with a US partner were at an advanced stage.

Pineapple was founded in 2017 by Matthew Elan Smith, Ndabenhle Junior Ngulube and Marnus van Heerden. They had come together to discover innovative and disruptive models in the reinsurance and insurance space at an innovation competition run by Hannover-Re, the third-largest reinsurance company in the world.

Pineapple allows users to insure their products by taking a photo of their possessions and uploading them to its mobile application. The app also allows users to add things to their asset register to insure them later.

Commenting about the win, Ndabenhle Junior Ngulube added, “We are excited about what this means for the future of software development in South Africa. It shows that we can compete on a global stage and that there is a bright future for the South African technology industry.”

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The secured investment will go into addressing the growing demand for professional skills. It will specifically facilitate Moringa’s regional expansion as well as development and strengthening of its platform.

Moringa School was founded in 2014 by Audrey Cheng and Frank Tamre, who later exited the startup, to bridge the skills gap in the current labor market. With programs aligned to data science and software development, it offers intensive market-driven education on relevant digital and professional skills that can satisfy the current job market needs. Moringa operates a B2B and B2C model and also staffs SMEs with qualified and skilled professionals apart from training students.

On the investment, Audrey Cheng, Founder and Managing Director of Moringa said, “We’re excited to continue to grow our quality and students served in partnership with DOB. We are looking forward to drawing on DOB’s experience in East Africa, as we build new market-aligned courses and expand our offerings to students in Kenya. Currently, Moringa has served students in Kenya from over 10 countries in Africa and is also looking forward to increasing access to our courses for students from other countries.”

Youth unemployment is rising in Kenya and other African countries. What’s more, education systems are not matching up to rapid industrial changes which demand different and better skill sets from students going through higher education institutions. Some courses offered in these institutions also don’t have demand in current markets and are being phased out.

Demand for digital skills is also on the rise as companies integrate technology in their systems and turn to big data. However, it is still a challenge for them to find high-quality tech talent.

Brigit van Dijk – van de Reijt, CEO of DOB Equity shares the same sentiments. She pointed out the increase in youth unemployment in Kenya coupled with a lack of vocational and training skills. She added that there was a need to rain tech talent better for youth to be competent with the needs of the growing market.

“The increasing global demand for tech talent, together with Africa’s rapidly rising youth population, makes this opportunity even more pressing, van Dijk stated.

In 2017, the impact investment firm DOB Equity had made known its plans to double its Kenyan Portfolio, scouting for ventures in retail, agribusiness, education, and energy. It is also keen to support innovative startups in the East African region with a strong focus on employability.

It has several Kenyan companies in its portfolio, among them Bridge International Academies, which is a social enterprise running a chain of low-cost schools. It also invested in Mr. Green Africa together with the Global Innovation Fund.

Speaking on this particular investment, Anne Njuki, Investment Manager of DOB Equity said, “We felt an immediate strong bond with Moringa’s truly innovative and ambitious management team. We are proud to be teaming up with them and are extremely excited about Moringa as it builds new courses and scales up to develop even more future tech leaders.”

This investment comes after Moringa School had been fined last month, for an unauthorized buyout, where Ms. Cheng bought off Mr. Tamre’s shares without notifying the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK).

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