4 Brilliant MEST Africa Start-Ups
Start-up incubators have long been synonymous with the famous Silicon Valley of California, but there’s a new wave of tech and innovation start-ups springing up across Africa and this is partly due to the influx of business start-ups on the continent, one of such is MEST Africa. In this Article, we’ll take a look at some (4) of the most brilliant start-ups that have emerged out of MEST Africa’s Incubator Program.
MEST Africa is a Technology Startup Incubator founded in Accra, Ghana in 2008, and they help tech startups across Africa by providing them with entrepreneurial training, an internal seed fund and a network of hubs located in Accra, Lagos, Cape Town & Nairobi. At the end of the training program MEST cohorts pitch to investors to stand a chance of winning pre-seed funding of an amount ranging from $50,000 — $250,000 to help them launch. So hey you can try applying, you might just make it.
First on the list is a start-up called Complete Farmer. Complete farmer is an argic-tech startup that specializes in crowd farming which is essentially crowd funding but for farms, and they allow everyday people from all around the world to invest in building sustainable farms. So in simple terms you just sit at home and own a farm that is run for you without getting your hands dirty, and you get your profit at the end of the production cycle because, complete farmer will manage everything up until your produce is sold. They launched in 2017 after successfully completing the MEST Program and were able to win about $100,000 in pre seed funding.
I really like this idea because I think in a few years digital farming will be more accepted in Africa especially because of the amount of jobs it could potentially create.
Next is a start-up called MeQasa, an online Real-Estate Business founded in 2013 by Kelvin Nyame, Rashad Seini, and Kofi Amuasi. These smart entrepreneurs launched MeQasa after completing the MEST Program and have been soaring high since. Over the past few years, MeQasa has received multiple nominations for Startup of the year and Technology startup of the year. MeQasa’s platform has simplified the house/apartment search for prospective buyers and tenants in Accra and other major cities by helping landlords and real estate professionals conduct their businesses efficiently online. In 2017 MeQasa acquired Jumia House Ghana, making them the biggest online marketplace for real estate in Ghana.
Third is Kudobuzz. Kudobuzz is a SaaS company that develops tools to help e-ecommerce merchants build trust, increase site traffic and boost sales using UGC (User-Generated Content) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) technologies. A SaaS company is a company whose software is accessed online via a subscription, rather than bought and installed on individual computers. Kudobuzz was founded in 2013 by David Tetteh, Kena Amoah and Lovell Larbie after successfully graduating from the MEST Africa program and is a proud MEST portfolio company. It’s very encouraging to see an African company step up to build these online tools for the ecommerce space, and I’d recommend all web developers to jump onto their platform and join their community, we need to support each other.
Finally, Leti Arts. Leti Arts is a Ghanaian interactive media company with its headquarters in Accra, Ghana. They develop media products such as digital comics and mobile games based on African History, culture and folklore. One of their popular releases is a game titled Africa’s Legends which is a puzzle based, fight simulation game using superheroes and villains from the Africa’s Legends universe. They also have a mobile app for all comic lovers like myself called Afro Comix where you can get all comics created by Africans for Africans.
Leti Arts have had a few notable mentions in international media such as the BBC, CNN, Tech Crunch, Forbes, Buzzfeed and the list goes on and on and on. Leti Arts is my personal favorite because they’re products don’t just target adults but kids get a piece of the fun cake too, and I believe this goes a long way to influence the imagination of kids and encourage them to be creative and adventurous. Especially as I myself entered the tech space because of my love for games and comics. Leti was founded by Eyram Tawia and Wesley Kirinya. and is one of the top MEST company portfolios.
To find out more about Tech Start-Ups on the African Landscape, find your way to my YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfNDoYaYrjA
Thanks for reading.
References
https://macjordangh.com/mest-africa-tech-startups/
https://meqasa.com/jumia-house-ghana-merges-with-meqasa
https://gharage.com/2018/08/31/complete-farmer-launches-web- farming-platform/
