Nigeria-based Co-Creation Hub (CcHub) has launched the Diaspora Challenge, a program aimed at bringing the Nigerians living abroad (primarily in the UK) to come together and invest in Africa-focused programs that would stop the brain drain.
These programs are intended to create jobs for Nigerians locally and eliminate the need for professionals to travel abroad in search of employment and/or business opportunities. The Diaspora Challenge want to engage Nigerian scientists, entrepreneurs, and innovators living in the UK to source scalable business plans, that can sprout up social entrepreneurs who can address some of the challenges facing the society.
Applications to the challenge are already ongoing and runs through until June 30. Applications in on invite-only-basis and invitees must be early stage startups with innovative solutions in these three categories: education, energy, and FinTech.
Six finalists will be selected (two from each category) by a panel made up of esteemed judges. They will each get incubation space at the CcHub for nine months and walk home with $15,000 seed funding.
Out of the finalists, more vetting will be done to identify which ones have a sustainable and most innovative plan. They will advance to the next stage of the competition, and stand a chance to get $250,000 from Growth Capital, a social innovation fund founded by CcHub. Growth Capital is dedicated to finding and investing in early stage startups that come up with the next generation of infrastructure. The fund coffers currently have some $888,596.
“We have long wanted to build stronger tech community connections between the UK and Africa in order to increase Diaspora community involvement,” said CcHub co-founder and CEO, Bosun Tijani.
“CcHub is a social innovation hub; we innovate and build to address social problems, and we want to facilitate development-focused dialogues and attract the best talent to help us in our mission. The CcHub Diaspora Challenge is the starting pistol to engaging, mentoring, incubating, and investing in Africans in the UK who can help ‘build Africa’ alongside us.”
The CcHub Diaspora Challenge was launched at Facebook headquarters in UK on May 6 2017. The launch event features talks, Qs and As, networking, cocktail reception, and music performance from the Nigeria Bez, Cobhams Asuquo singer and songwriter Bumi.