MEST Africa has invested $300,000 into three Kenyan startups from it’s $1.1m seed fund.
The three Kenyan startups, Farmula, Saada & Nadia were part of MEST Africa’s 11 startups from its 2019 cohort that each received $100,000 in financing.
The combined $1.1 million backing is the largest to date for the organization which operates as a training program and seed fund for African innovators to build successful commercial tech companies.
MEST Africa was launched in 2008 and is headquartered in Accra, Ghana. The organisation launched into the Kenyan Market in 2015 and in 2018, they launched their tech incubator hub at Nairobi Garage.
MEST Africa runs an annual programme and then invests in startups formed by its graduates. Now in its 11th year, over 60 tech companies have been launched via MEST’s seed funding and mentorship.
The 3 Kenyan startups will join the MEST Incubator in Kenya while the est will join MEST incubators in Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. Four that are launching in Ghana, namely social support network and healthcare service aggregator Massira, digital savings platform BezoMoney, consumer financing service Niqao, and big data platform Adi+Bolga.
The three that will launch in Nigeria inl, namely property development crowdfunding platform CoFundie, music studio booking service CoVibes, and beauty platform Zuri.
Kweza, a service that enables informal retailers to order products and receive deliveries directly to their stores, will be the first in the MEST portfolio to launch in South Africa.
This year’s funded startups will join more than 30 companies currently in incubation as part of MEST’s portfolio across Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, and the graduates will join over 400 alumni across the continent.
Two months ago, MEST Africa announced it had appointed Ashwin Ravichandran as its new Managing Director to replace Aaron Fu who left the Pan-African entrepreneurial training program, seed fund and incubator to focus on angel investing.