Google's Launchpad Accelerator Africa Program

Last year, we announced that 4 Nigerian startups (out of the only 6 African startups) got into Google’s Global Launchpad Accelerator Program. As a recap, they were Delivery Science – data collection startup, GidiMobile – learning platform, Flutterwave, and Paystack – payment startups.

Then startups out of Africa had to compete with the fierce competition from other startups around the globe for the prestigious Launchpad Accelerator Program, an equity-free six months support and mentoring program that comes with two weeks of all-expenses-paid training at the Google HQ in Silicon Valley.

However, with the coming of Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, at the Google for Nigeria 2017 event, an Africa-focused agenda was birthed.

Google Nigeria Country Director, Juliet Ehimuan, speaking at the launch of the Google Launchpad Accelerator Africa Program

He announced the Launchpad Accelerator Africa Program, “which includes over $3 million in equity-free support to more than 60 African tech startups over three years including mentorship, working space and access to technology and startup experts from Google and our external communities all over the world”, according to a Google official statement.

For this first batch (with applications opened since November 2017) of the Africa-focused Launchpad program, 12 African startups were chosen from 6 countries; Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. Of the twelve, 6 Nigerian startups were selected, 2 Kenyan startups and 1 each from the other four countries as seen in Table 1. This is quite reasonable if we look at the sheer number of people living in the country (Nigeria) compared to the other participating countries.

Table 1: Inaugural Class of the Google Launchpad Accelerator Africa Program by country and Industry
S/N	Country	Startup Name	Description	Industry
1	Ghana	OMG Digital	– a media platform which produces hyper-local, engaging and entertaining content that African millennials love to consume and share.	Media
2	Kenya	Flexpay	– an automated and secured layaway e-commerce system.	E-commerce
3	Kenya	Pezesha	– a scalable Peer to Peer microlending marketplace which allows Kenyans to loan to Kenyans, via mobile money using big data and credit analytics.	Financial Services (P2P lending)
4	Nigeria	Babymigo	– a trusted social community for expecting mothers and young parents.	Family and Household
5	Nigeria	Kudi	– payment for Africa through messaging.	Financial Services (Payments)
6	Nigeria	OkadaBooks	– a social platform that allows users easily create, spread and sell their stories/books/documents in a matter of minutes.	E-commerce
7	Nigeria	Piggybank.ng	– allows Africans put aside little amounts of money periodically till they reach a savings target.	Financial Services (Savings)
8	Nigeria	Riby	– a peer-to-peer banking platform for cooperatives and their members that allows them to save, borrow and invest, together.	Financial Services (Savings and P2P)
9	Nigeria	Thrive Agric	– crowdfunds investments for small holder farmers, and provide this to them in form of inputs, tech driven advisory and access to market.	Agriculture
10	South Africa	swiftVEE	– a platform for connecting livestock agencies to a network of buyers and sellers.	Agriculture
11	Tanzania	TangoTv	– a media streaming and video on demand service for African local content; films and shows.	Media
12	Uganda	Teheca	– helps families and individuals find the right health care providers/workers in Uganda.	Healthcare

For instance, Nigeria’s Population (195,875,237) is comfortably greater than 3 times of Kenya’s (50,950,879), the country with the second highest number of African startups chosen.

Also, the startups were from the following sectors FinTech (4), Agriculture (2), E-commerce (2), Media (2) and Healthcare (1).

Africa’s Child population is one of the largest in the world and expected to grow by 170 million in 2030. Hence, we should be seeing more applications and recruitment from startups focused in the Health and Education sector. As it stands, it is such a shame that no Educational focused startup was chosen, perhaps, the ones that applied did not make the cut for the Google Program.

In all, Google’s drive on the continent has had a meaningful impact on the STEM/developer and Women Empowerment communities. Just yesterday, they announced a partnership with Andela and Udacity to give out 15,000 ‘single-course’ scholarships and 500 nanodegree scholarships to aspiring developers in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa!

We wish the selected startups all the best in their program and we are excited to see what they build!