12 Startup Founders Highlighted at Event Designed to Spur Technology Innovation in Africa

Flapmax, in partnership with Microsoft, announced this week the launch of the FAST Accelerator Founder Series, showcasing the work of its FAST Accelerator program graduates – 12 startup founders representing countries across Africa. The 12-week accelerator program, created to help African startups scale more sustainably, launched this year with participants chosen from 800 applicants.

The event highlighted the impact of participation in the FAST Accelerator Program, with startup founders strengthening their business development, marketing, and growth plans. Together with Microsoft, Flapmax will continue to support these startup founders, including with cloud support and go-to-market, AI integration, and a host of other services.

FAST Accelerator startup participants were chosen from over 800 applications, representing diverse industries, including education, fintech, agtech, sustainability and health. The innovations developed by the startups address the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) bothering on equality, education, and poverty reduction, among others.

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The FAST Accelerator Founder Series is designed to amplify African startups, share how their founders are leveraging technology to scale sustainable operations, highlight the solutions being offered by diverse entrepreneurs across Africa, expand startup brand recognition, and build a global community of brand ambassadors. The first FAST Accelerator Founder Series event, held to mark the culmination of the 12-week accelerator program, included:

• Mustapha Suberu, Capsa Technology, who shared that the FAST Accelerator training program was a sort of mini-MBA
• Vincent Okeke, LegitCar, who shared that participation in the FAST Program led to an uptick in brand awareness, exposure of their product, and increase in their business development activities
• Ryan Panderis, Lynkwise’s founder, said working on Microsoft product integrations was impactful as much as the networking opportunity provided by Flapmax was a huge success to their business expansion throughout Africa
• Jesse Mutimba, from KaCyber said they greatly appreciated the Azure Credits and talented interns provided as part of FAST, stating that the program delivered a quicker digital transformation and much faster traction for their business at a scale larger than they initially thought they would.

Other founders represented at the event were Edwin Lubanga – Snark Health, Karim Amer – VAIS, Dominique Kavuisya – Taimba, Lekan Omotosho – Pade, Dayo Adeniran – DayDone, Ronald Mutuku – Silqu, Paulus Indongo – K-12Plus, and Dr. Trish – Tumaini La Maisha.

“We were proud to share the work of each graduate of our first program, and hope their success inspires the next generation of entrepreneurs,” said Dave Ojika, CEO, Flapmax. “In addition to the next cohort of Accelerator participants, the Founders Series will continue to shine a light on the work of entrepreneurs across Africa. We are already planning a demo day to come this fall.”

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Representing Microsoft at the event, EduAbasi Chukwunweike, Partner Development Manager at Microsoft-Cloud, shared, “Microsoft offers solutions focused on enhancing the growth of startups in Africa, and these informed the recent intervention programs in form of acceleration, incubation, and access to Microsoft enterprise solutions to Startups across Africa.”

FAST is interested in helping all 800 startup founders who applied for the first accelerator program grow sustainably, as well as new business-to-business startups and subject matter experts in Africa, inclusive of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), communities and governments.