Village Capital has announced the launch of their first hardware accelerator in Africa, in partnership with Gearbox, a unique space for inventors to build and showcase innovative ideas in East Africa.

With support from The Lemelson Foundation, The Doen Foundation, SGII, and VC4Africa, Village Capital and Gearbox will be able to provide unique capacity building to these businesses to help these entrepreneurs overcome the challenges unique to inventors in reaching scale.

12 high-potential invention-based ventures will be selected to participate and will receive extensive feedback from their peers, potential customers, investors and industry experts, as well as the opportunity to peer-select two participating ventures to receive $50,000 each in pre-committed investment. The program is structured as three intensive 4-day sessions over 3 months with additional remote collaboration online between sessions.

Village Capital are especially interested in Companies seeking to improve access to energy for all or provide increased agricultural productivity for small-holder farmers. Examples include:

1. Affordability: inventions that radically increase affordability of energy generation or agricultural products.
2. Reduced Consumption: innovations that reduce the cost of consumption for small-holder farmers
3. Efficiency: technologies that increase the efficiency of energy and/or agricultural distribution systems.

Program Dates:
Session 1: October 21-24; Nairobi, Kenya
Session 2: January 6-9; TBD
Session 3: February 22-25; Nairobi, Kenya
To find out more click here.