Only 0.72% of Africa’s total venture capital was raised by African edtech entrepreneurs in 2022. Under its Edtech Fellowship Program, Co-Creation Hub (CcHub) hope to raise this number over the following three years.
Between now and 2025, the accelerator program plans to invest $15 million into 72 firms in Nigeria and Kenya. Bosun Tijani, co-founder and CEO of CcHUB is of the opinion that the introduction of the investment will jump-start and restart the edtech ecosystem.
The internal research team at CcHUB will collaborate with portfolio businesses through this accelerator to test their products from launching to scaling. Selected startups will receive support from the top innovation hub for Africa in areas including product development, government relations, pedagogy and learning science, portfolio management, communication, instructional design, and community building.
CcHUB already collaborated with one of Nigeria’s top educational institution, Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), to establish an Edtech Center of Excellence in 2019.
In August 2020, iHub (which CcHub bought in 2019) opened the iHub Teachers’ Lounge to provide teachers with the online teaching resources and 21st-century teaching techniques they need to engage students more deeply and collaborate more effectively in the classroom.
Africa’s CcHUB boasts a network of over 650 startups that can be traced back to the hub’s innovation-focused programs and interventions. It also boasts of more than 7,300 direct jobs and over 35,000 indirect jobs created by its portfolio companies through their value chain.
CcHub’s investment will be essential to how each edtech firm conducts team building, MVP and prototyping testing, go-to-market strategies, engagement with organizations, and user feedback gathering through providing shared resources. These added benefits will go beyond the original $100,000 in program funding that entrepreneurs would get. In addition to the accelerator, there is a provision for follow-on investment, which will give seed or Series A investors diversification and lower risk.
To ensure that there is a clear understanding of how to scale education solutions, CcHud create this program to identify the smartest individuals in the startup ecosystem and link them with government authorities, public sectors, schools, and academic institutions.
