What’s your definition of women founders? To me, they are those innovative and ambitious women, fiercely dedicated to their enterprise. They balance this with their wholehearted commitment to their families.
Although 2020 is viewed by all as a particularly difficult year, yet it has seen more than 21% of Africa’s investments secured by startups that are founded or co-founded by women. Hopefully, there’s still more good news in the coming year.
In this light, the AWS Activate Africa Startup group has announced that it will launch the AWS Africa Startup Connect – Women Founded & Led Startups program in 2021.
The initiative is set to empower and connect Africa’s inspiring women founders, providing them with access to experts and mentors.
The core of this program is to support women founded and led startups in Africa, enabling participants to build sustainable tech-enabled businesses that can create solutions to real problems. As a woman founder, here’s your chance to scale your business to the next level.
Eligibility
Interested participants must be:
- A female founder, co-founder, or senior leader of a tech startup that is less than 10 years old
- Based in or operate their business in Africa
- Willing to dedicate up to 3 hours every 5 weeks for the sessions.
- Available to connect with mentors based on scheduled opportunities.
- Ready to learn from and share their own experience with fellow participants.
- Compose a 5 slide story deck about the founder and startup based on the provided template.
- Open to learning about new technologies & services like Machine Learning and AI to boost their products, services, and business.
Note that eligible startups must have secured or had the intention to raise pre-Seed, Seed, or Series A investment.
Benefits of Participation in the program
In addition to the training sessions, participants will
- Have access to startup support programs like Mentorship & AWS Activate
- Be given needed support for qualifying innovative Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Use Cases & Proof of Concepts.
- Receive qualifying introductions to relevant Accelerators & Investors.
- Granted access to relevant AWS events & training.
- Enjoy the opportunity to network with other women startup founders & leaders from Africa.
- Be Selected for Startup Story reference opportunities.
- Any participating startup founders or leaders who already have a working MVP on AWS infrastructure, a market deployed product on AWS, or those interested in migrating an existing project to AWS may qualify for the AWS migration support program and AWS service credits.
Application process
- Qualified startups are invited to join by completing the application form
- You will be connected to the AWS Africa startup team directly to complete the onboarding process.
- In early February 2021, invitations with the date & time for the first AWS Africa Startup Connect – Women Founded & Led Startups session will be shared.
- Participants will receive regular updates on 2021 events, training, and opportunities.
If you’re interested in this opportunity, click here. Application closes on Monday, January 18, 2021.
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