Burning Heroes seeks African start-ups ‘who want to go global’

Campus-based start-ups, pre-seed start-ups with market validation and product prototype, and seed start-ups can now enter the Burning Heroes Founders Association’s first Africa edition competition. The contest is set to help African start-ups reveal their potential and help develop the region which has huge prospects. 

Organisers say the competition is a part of Burning Heroes Founders Association’s mission to equalise access to global opportunities for talented founders. All the association’s events are collaborative and non-profit and called to connect founders with investors, media, and experts.

BH Africa is the association’s second project, after BH Startup Awards, which took place in August 2022. The awards brought together more than 100 start-ups and 20 investors. Nine start-ups from Germany, Kenya, Russia, Singapore, and the United States won the competition.

This time around, the focus is on Africa as an attractive region for venture capital.

Victor Aneleh, programme manager for Africa at the Burning Heroes Start-up Award, says: “Harnessing the potential of tech start-Ups could serve as a catalyst to Africa’s socio-economic development and a key to unlocking local value creation and employment on the continent.

“According to Statista, from 2014 onwards, the value of early-stage funding on the continent increased significantly. This reflects a welcome maturation in the Africa technology start-ups entrepreneurial ecosystem.”

Burning Heroes Startup Awards is supported by leading partners from the United States and Europe. This includes 500 Global, APX.VC, Techstars, Starta VC, an Stanford Entrepreneur Club.

The Africa Edition boasts judges from the likes of Meta, AWS, Flat6Labs, Savant VC, The Delta, OnePay S.A (SisPay), Africa: The Big Deal, Impact Rooms, Fund The Gap, AfricArena, Katapult VC, Naspers Labs, and more.

BH Africa will offer 30 of the early-stage start-ups on the continent an opportunity to live pitch online to an all-African and European panel of VC’s and successful tech founders.

Online applications are accepted until Friday, 13 January 2023.

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