The AGEA Start-up Class 2024 was organised this year in a mostly physical format with four start-up projects: Kente Weaver (Ghana), Clean Energy4All (Benin), SACP Africa (Nigeria), and WEMA Soap (Kenya). The start-ups attended a two-week training/start-up class in Leipzig from May 27, 2024, to June 7, 2024. The content of the business development training was intended to help the start-ups develop business plan proposals for the EXIST start-up grant funding in Germany. The training included sessions on innovation, research history, unique selling propositions, marketing plans, enterprise development, and financial planning. After each session, the teams worked on their proposals and presented their progress on the final day for feedback from the team of business development experts and coaches. Participants also participated in the Born Global Start-up Festival, an initiative by Leipzig University to empower international start-ups in Germany, where they received the International Innovators Awards and presented their projects to an international audience. Furthermore, they also attended the MACHEN Festival, which is a festival that offers a platform for companies, founders, start-ups, developers, creatives, institutions, and projects from Central Germany.
Each participant/start-up received a certificate for their participation in the training, and they are to return to their countries to work on the proposals. The training sessions were conducted by Gunnar Kaßberg, Christian Scheffler, Bismark Agyei Yeboah, Christian Hauke, Wojtek Muras, and Elisa Türpe, business coaches at Leipzig University.
The Start-up Class is a follow-up activity to the AGEA Business Idea Competition, which focused on engaging science and technology-based start-ups with prototypes based on research conducted at African HEIs. In March this year, AGEA opened applications to eligible participants, mostly scientists, researchers, university staff, and students with science and technology-based projects from six African countries: Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tunisia.
The African German Entrepreneurship Academy (AGEA) is an initiative that collaborates closely with committed academic and business partners in Africa and Germany to advance practice-oriented entrepreneurship education and the creation of start-ups in Africa to build and sustain the entrepreneurial orientation at African Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It is a channel to promote innovative research-based start-up ideas and projects from African universities as part of the ACCESS project. The participation of the start-ups in this year’s start-up class in Leipzig was partly supported by funding from the Erasmus+ Mobility Grants through Leipzig University.
