ALX Ventures

Entrepreneurship Overview

Why Is Entrepreneurship Important For Africa & ALI?

Job Creation

Entrepreneurship is by far the largest source of wealth and job creation for most societies. Across the ALG ecosystem, over 70% of work opportunities we’ve created so far have been powered by the entrepreneurs who graduated from ALA, ALU or ALX.

Youth

Young entrepreneurs tend to hire their peers. We find that every young entrepreneur we create across the ALG ecosystem employs on average around 7 other young people. We need young Africans to see entrepreneurship as a “career” instead of a “backup plan”.

Innovation

Entrepreneurs tackle big problems with limited resources in creative ways. They are positioned to develop low-cost, large-scale solutions to challenges across healthcare, urbanization, climate change, education, infrastructure, agriculture and governance.

Tracking Progress: Our MCF Dashboard

We anticipate that entrepreneurship will create at least half of our 2 million job creation target by 2030. We also track a number of other related metrics such as newly developed entrepreneurs, capital raised and contribution towards Africa’s GDP, via a combination of self-reported business reporting by founders and ecosystem monitoring.

Our 2030 mission is to develop, connect and fund African entrepreneurs to create 1 million jobs.

3 Pillars

Develop

Through our Founder Academy, Incubator and Accelerator pathway, we support tech-enabled founders from our AL ecosystem to build, launch and grow startups.

Connect

Through our global innovation platform, hubs and conferences, we identify technology innovators and connect them with partners, investors and talent.

Fund

Through our network, we mobilize and deploy capital for startups discovered and developed through our ecosystem research and accelerator programs.

Develop

Connect

Fund

Our Philosophy: Camels, not Unicorns

The Silicon Valley venture capital model doesn’t always fully translate to the African entrepreneurship landscape. We need startups and scale-ups that can navigate the ups and downs of entrepreneurship without deep funding pools. They need to earn their keep from customers and the market, not from continuous funding rounds. They need viable business models and the resilient to last for long periods of “drought”.

Joseph Rutakangwa, Rwazi

One of our most successful entrepreneurs coming out of ALU, Joseph Rutakangwa, only needed $10k and then later $50k to find product-market fit and begin scaling up his startup. Today, he has raised $4m and scaled his startup massively, creating freelance work for over 50,000 “mappers” across Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Diana Asliga, Loyal Baskets

Not all entrepreneurs emerging from our ecosystem are building tech products, but still have the opportunity to create massive job opportunities by leveraging existing tech platforms. Diana, a current ALU student, runs a basket-weaving business based in Ghana that already employs over 300 women and through ALX Ventures has explored how to leverage e-commerce to expand sales of her “Made in Africa” product line.

How does ALX Ventures connect founders to financing?

Competitions

We host and co-host competitions to mobilize entrepreneurs within our ecosystem to showcase their ideas or startups, typically with the opportunity to secure grant funding, publicity and partnerships.

Investor Matching

We organize regular virtual and in-person pitch events with local angel groups as well as facilitating warm introductions to angels and early-stage venture funds across our African and global networks.

Talent-For-Equity

We are piloting a model where we provide access to dedicated or fractional teams of tech talent to support a startup in building or refining its product, in exchange for equity in their company.

Scale Up ALX Ventures

4,000 entrepreneurs graduated from Founder Academy.
1,000 early-stage startups admitted into Incubator.
150 growth-stage startups supported in Accelerator.

Revamp Innovation Platform

2,000 claimed profiles and strong platform BAU metrics.
1,000 roles filled via job board.
10 global tech hubs mapped.

Host City & Regional Events

1 startup ecosystem event per city for active hubs.
1 annual innovation summit alongside ALN in Kigali.

Connect Founders to Capital

25 Investors-in-Residence serve as mentors and judges.
25 monthly pitch events hosted in city hubs.
10 startups join equity agreement pilot.

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