Angel Investors are increasingly making a difference to the global start-up scene by helping promising entrepreneurs start and grow companies. The African Angel Academy (AAA) has now been established to help accelerate angel investing in Africa.
Through the creation of an angel investing curriculum, tools, and mentorship from established angels, all available through an online portal, AAA hopes to reach a wide audience of aspiring angel investors.
The Academy aims to contribute to the need for a stronger angel investing community across the continent, which provides mentorship, knowledge and capital to early-stage businesses.
Pilot Program
AAA hopes to grow the number of investors and investor groups who provide much-needed seed capital and mentor support to promising entrepreneurs, and to drive economic growth across the continent. AAA is now accepting applications for its pilot programme. We are looking for 50 new angels (five groups of 10 angels, with a minimum of 4 female angels per group) to train over the next 12 months from 5 different countries in Southern Africa. This programme is open to both newly formed groups as well as individuals.
As an angel participating in this programme, you will be provided with support, tools and knowledge to become active angel investors. This will be done through workshops, online videos and tools as well as virtual mentorship for the groups.
Who should apply?
This programme is suited to new angels who may have made one or two investments without a formal process or systems, or to aspiring angel investors (i.e. you have the capital and time to consider investing into local start-ups during this project). Typically an angel investor is someone who has been a successful entrepreneur and would like to support new entrepreneurs; is a successful professional and would like to contribute both money and expertise to a start-up; or is a retired business person, who has the time and capital to invest into younger entrepreneurs.
Currently, the project aims to work with groups of angels from South African, Zambia, Mauritius, Tanzania, Botswana or Namibia (the final 5 countries will be selected based on the application numbers).
We we are looking for angels who will commit to participating in this programme, by providing data (via surveys), attending workshops (2 x 1-day workshops), accessing online content (approximately 10 hours) and participating in mentorship sessions (4 x 1 hour) for the next 12 months (February 2020 to March 2021). In addition, angels will need to organise a venue and catering for two one day workshops, and cover any travel should they be based outside of the capital city. We are also looking for angels or organizations to be coordinators or host partners to play this role and support the project. Applications are open here and will close by 14 February 2020.
Program Overview and Timeline
The content that will be covered both online and through in-country workshops includes topic such as angel investing strategy & mandate, deal sourcing, due diligence, deal structuring, valuations, negotiations, teams, post Investment & value addition, exits and angel Group Management & Structures.
Partners
The partners in this pilot are Fraser Consulting, a strategy, and innovation consultancy, based in South Africa; the African Business Angel Network (ABAN), promoting and training angel investors across the continent, based in Mauritius; and Viktoria Business Angel Network (VBAN), promoting angel investment in East Africa, based in Kenya, who have a track record of developing and delivering content together.
These three organizations are already actively building a network of early-stage investors at a regional level. This pilot program has been generously supported by the Southern Africa Innovation and Support (SAIS) program.
