Applications for the five Venture Bus tours in Africa are now open. For the third year in a row, Ampion will run its pan-African startup competition joined by participants from all across the globe.
On the road, entrepreneurs are supported by experienced mentors from leading tech centers in Africa and world-wide and develop information and communication technology (ICT) solutions for the African market – this has already lead to capital investment and job creation in Africa.
Venture Buses are driving through 14 countries all across Africa
This year five Ampion Venture Buses will cross 14 African countries. Each tour is a 7-day full-immersion program for developing entrepreneurial skills and creating new ventures in a team-based competition set on a bus. Venture Buses run in East, West, North and Southern Africa. The Ampion Venture Bus will come to Morocco for the first time. Each Venture Bus tour culminates at a Grand Final, incorporated within the continent’s most renowned tech conferences such as DEMO Africa (Nigeria), AfricaCom (South Africa) and the Transform Africa Summit (Rwanda. Along the road, the Venture Bus and its participants visit all major tech- and startup-communities within each region to hold local events, getting in touch with thousands of Africa’s most promising IT talents. „We believe, home-grown entrepreneurship and startups tackling social needs are the best way to sustainable growth on the continent“, says Ampion CEO Fabian Guhl.
Visiting Africa’s tech markets to build new companies
In the frame of five major final events all across Africa, startups are pitched to leading companies, investors as well as the hosting countries’ ministers such as Rwandan Minister of Youth and ICTJean PhilbertNsengimana. In the first two years of the Ampion Venture Bus program, over 30 African tech startups emerged, providing ICT solutions to issues in healthcare, education, fin-tech, public transport, citizen engagement, tourism, water sanitation and much more. 40 new companies are expected to come out of the Venture Buses 2015. Last year Ampion received applications from more than 2000 applicants from 43 countries. In 2015, in its third year, the organization is expecting yet another boost of applications.
Innovations in modern banking, e-health and more – still open for partners
This year Ampion is partnering up with corporate and public partners to set a focus on selected topics on each Venture Bus. Experts will advise the entrepreneurs along the way and potentially facilitate investment by their company into the developed startups. In East, West and Southern Africa, one of these topics will be citizen engagement and democratic participation through ICT. In West and East Africa there will partly be a focus on fin-tech and modern banking. An additional “theme track” in East Africa will be e-health and healthcare innovation. The Southern African Venture Bus will focus on hardware development. While each Venture Bus will have one or more topical focus, the development of startups in other sectors is still possible on every Venture Bus.
Halt Ebola and sterio.me – finding innovative solutions to local challenges
One of the winners of the Venture Bus programs 2014 is Halt Ebola – an app enabling rural population to receive and exchange vital healthcare information through voice messages and robo-calls in their tribal language. Another startup already active since 2013 is sterio.me. The service enables teachers to transmit and learners to receive homework and learning material via free sms, making education more easily accessible in rural areas.
Apply here: http://www.ampion.org/
Staff Writer
