Global VC Flourish Announces Madica, an Africa-focused Program to Support Pre-seed-Stage Startups

Some of the biggest obstacles facing startup founders in sub-Saharan Africa are access to finance and a lack of support structures.

And although though the continent’s venture capital and founder support programs are expanding, much work still has to be done to satisfy the financial, technological, and social capital needs of underserved groups, particularly women founders.

These gaps continue to be the driving force for the creation of new initiatives like Madica by American venture capital company Flourish Ventures, which aims to ease the constraints of founding firms.

A pan-African investment program called Madica was just launched, and it intends to empower underrepresented creators all over the continent by providing financing, technology support, and coaching. The initiative, which is independent of industry, focuses on pre-seed stage technology startups, when most projects fail.

The program has allocated $6 million to invest in up to 30 African entrepreneurs, providing the much-needed capital in exchange for each startup obtaining up to $200,000 in exchange for equity. The first stage of investment will last three years.

Despite the fact that investment is expanding on the continent, money are frequently disproportionately directed towards a small number of successful businesspeople and biased toward the more well-known tech clusters… Sector-neutral Madica plans to intensify its provision of direct assistance, abundant resources, network connectivity, and other services. This is why we have set aside an additional $6 million for programming support in addition to the investment cash, according to Emmanuel Adegboye, CEO of Madica.

We urge entrepreneurs from all around the continent to apply for our program. We think Africans have an unrivaled sense of entrepreneurial spirit, and one of Madica’s main objectives is to make sure that every African creator has an equal opportunity to succeed, ” he stated.

Outside of the well-established centers of Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, Madica said it is eager to reach underserved markets on the continent. This is a part of its effort to assist regional and female founders in order to achieve a pan-African reach.

The creators must be working on their idea full-time, have a minimal viable product, and have received little to no institutional investment in order to be eligible for the program. Rolling admission and application are both requirements for the program.

In order to find businesses to support, Madica is also working with AfriLabs, Pariti, the Africa Early Stage Investor Summit, the Celo Foundation, and Rising Tide.

Mentors for participating founders will include Isis Nyong’o, a partner at Asphalt & Ink, Idris Saliu, a co-founder of Ceviant Finance, and Wendy Hoffman, the capital legal counsel at The Delta.

“Madica is an investment in the African startup ecosystem with the bold objective of bringing about a more significant systemic change. Through Madica, we want to build a team of mentors, provide programs of the highest caliber, crowdsource follow-on funding, and use Flourish’s global presence to expand the reach of regional networks. Ameya Upadhyay, the venture partner at Flourish Ventures, an early-stage fintech VC whose portfolio includes Nigeria’s Flutterwave and Paga, predicted that these will eventually be advantageous to other players in the ecosystem, including companies, investors, and policymakers.

According to Upadhyay, “We think that Madica can transform the narrative around African startups – lessen the perception of risk, attract more finance, motivate more founders, and gain more media attention.”