Frank Ogbuagu gave the opening remarks at the finals of the Africa Startup Ecosystem (ASEL) held virtually at Yale School of Management, USA on May 14, 2024. The event brought together venture capitalists with an interest in Africa, top business school students from the Global Network in Advanced Management initiative as well as technology enthusiasts interested in startup culture in Africa.

ASEL is a student-led program of the Yale Africa Startup Review (YASR), an alumni-led initiative at the Yale School of Management.

ASEL aims to provide promising African startups with talent from top business schools globally to provide consulting support to address a key problem. During the 6-week lab, business school students are matched with participating African startups.

Participating startups are at critical junctures and require insight into best-in-class strategies for scaling their ventures, raising funds or addressing bottlenecks limiting growth.

In his remarks, Frank highlighted the value of tech startups in addressing the development challenges facing the continent. Drawing from his seasoned experience in energy, manufacturing and technology as well as his exposure to latest startup and business thinking at Yale, Frank provided a background to the startup scene on the continent, highlighting the West African and East African scenes as case studies. According to Frank, “In addition to funding, startups on the African continent would benefit vastly from continued exposure to the best talent globally, instead of being restricted to local talent pools.

Tapping into networks of the African diaspora remains a key point of accessing talent that is both technically and culturally attuned to the peculiarities of the continent”. Frank also stated that it is incumbent on Africans to continue to raise the visibility of the brilliant and innovative work ongoing on the continent to open up more opportunities to gain funding and mentorship from world-leading startup ecosystem enablers. That way, solutions developed in Africa can be transplanted to other continents attempting to solve similar problems.

The ASEL event rounded up the final section of the YASR annual programming following the YASR conference. The 2024 YASR conference held at Yale University on April 27, 2024.

Six teams from a starting 30 teams qualified to the finals of the ASEL event, after a robust evaluation of their engagement with participating startups, quality of solutions to identified business problems and the value created for the startups. Participating startups spanned tech-enabled transportation, renewables, finance, agriculture and education. Winners of the ASEL top 3 prizes were Sqdgo Ltd, a Kenyan transport-tech startup, Bio Bloom, a Zimbabwean agritech venture and Green Giraffe, a Zambian agritech business. Schools represented by the winning teams include the University of Oxford’s Said Business School, UK, IE Business School, Spain, Asian Institute of Management, The Philippines and Fudan University, China.

The highlight of the event was the presentations by the leading teams and award of the prizes to the top 3 student teams based on their work over the duration of the startup lab.