You have identified a need, a gap in the market. You have a great idea on how you can solve it. You share your idea and get a few people on your team. With the team, you develop a sample product. People love the idea. Your product sample has potential customers. This could be a business. So far you’ve invested talent, work, and your savings. Now you want to grow. Where do you get the funding to propel your vision?

For many start-ups, funding to scale the idea can be the hardest thing. There are bills to be paid; rent, server costs, research – you name it. In a study, Savannah Fund found that first year costs for a tech start-up in Africa could be anywhere between almost $30,000 and just over $70,000. Money can be tight. Sometimes the team even goes without taking a salary just to get the business on its feet. Funding is therefore a do or die matter for start-ups.

A pandemic like COVID19 makes finding access to funding even worse. The global economy has been slowed down by the pandemic and is expected to continue into 2021. AfricArena estimates an expected drop of as much as $800 million in start-up funding in Africa.

With the aim to make venture access easier, we developed Venture Access Platform as a tool to help entrepreneurs get the kind of funding they need.

“We have always heard that there are ‘thousands of VCs and investors focusing on Africa’. But never know where to start from. Well, now you do”

– Abdulrahman Abdi

The platform is a searchable database of funders, from angel investors to venture capitalists offering various types of funding. It is designed to be incredibly easy to use. Once you open www.propel.africa/access on your browser, take the following steps;

This will give you a list of organisations that offer the type of funding in the country you selected. In this example, we have 18 Private Equity funders offering equity funding in Ghana.

There you go! In just 3 easy steps, you are the front door of the people who can give your idea the wings it needs to fly. From the list, you can review each organisation to find the best fit for your start-up.

The complete database consists of over 3,000 organisations. With such variety, there’s no limit to what heights your start-up can reach!

As mentioned in an earlier blog, the Venture Access platform is part of our COVID19 response to provide resources to Africa focused entrepreneurs.

Do you know an African start-up that could benefit from this platform? Feel free to share this article with them.