Entries for VilCap Communities Africa programme to close this Friday

Entries for VilCap Communities Africa — a programme that seeks to equip incubators, accelerators, and seed funds with the tools, resources and connections they need to catalyse impact investment — are set to close this Friday (6 July).

The initiative is being run by venture capital firm Village Capital and the UK Department for International Development’s (DFID) Impact Programme. Applications are open to accelerators, incubators, small business advisory firms, university incubators, and think tanks.

The VilCap Communities Africa programme will select 15 ecosystem leaders to take part in forums in Lagos, Nairobi and Cape Town

Programme organisers will select 15 applicants to take part in forums later this year in Lagos, Nairobi and Cape Town, where they will share best practices on supporting entrepreneurs, including the following:

• How to attract funding for your programme.
• How to stimulate investment capital in your ecosystem.
• How to recruit and select high potential ventures.
• How to help prepare entrepreneurs to become ready for investment.
• How to improve certain aspects of your ecosystem that need development, such as corporate partnerships, mentor networks, angel networks and access to venture capital.

The first cohort of the programme will run between 24 and 28 September, the second from 22 to 26 October, while the closing forum will be between 12 and 14 November.

VilCap Communities Africa is an iteration of VilCap Communities, a 26-city pilot programme to license Village Capital’s award-winning curriculum and investment model to accelerators, incubators and investors around the globe.

The programme’s focus will be informed by Village Capital’s follow-up report How Ecosystem Builders Can Best Help Entrepreneurs Succeed, which is based on interviews with more than 100 ecosystem leaders.

Village Capital has directly trained more than 80 entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa over the course of eight investment-readiness programmes.

These initiatives — which have featured entrepreneurs from 20 countries across the continent — have facilitated 14 seed-stage investments by the firm’s seed fund, VilCap Investments.

For more information contact Brenda Wangari at brenda.wangari@vilcap.com