African Diaspora Network Builders of Africa’s Future (BAF) 2026 – Cohort Nine – YOA

Deadline: March 31, 2026

Applications are open for the African Diaspora Network Builders of Africa’s Future (BAF) 2026. Builders of Africa’s Future (BAF) celebrates innovation and impression in early-stage African enterprises. The program identifies African entrepreneurs working early-stage nonprofits or for-revenue companies that deal with key group wants by means of expertise or differentiated enterprise fashions. The purpose is to assist scale their ventures and impression within the areas of well being, training, power, agriculture, monetary inclusion, gender inclusion, diet, commerce, infrastructure growth and so on.. 

The BAF program yearly awards some of Africa’s most promising entrepreneurs with enterprise growth coaching, mentorship, and networking alternatives, and a platform to spice up model visibility and funding potential in Silicon Valley. Since 2018, Builders of Africa’s Future has acknowledged and catalyzed 93 African startups.

Benefits

• Training from the African Management Institute (AMI) of Kenya
• Invitation to attend the twelfth African Diaspora Investment Symposium. Attendees are accountable for masking all prices

Eligibility

Open to founders and executives of corporations who’re catalysts of developmental progress on the continent of Africa.

Primary choice standards for builder enterprises:

• Must be a longtime authorized entity already in operation for six months or extra with demonstrable early traction evidenced in rising utilization, income, or different metrics (not a pitch or prototype). The enterprise ought to have an internet site, tangible digital or bodily product, or image of a couple of profitable occasion over greater than 6 months.
• Must be an revolutionary method to serve unmet wants on the continent or deal with its challenges. The innovation should match throughout the African cultural and socioeconomic context and can’t be a clone of a Western expertise or enterprise answer with out differentiation.
• The entrepreneur should have the ability to attend the month-to-month enterprise coaching classes, agree to finish 2 core modules earlier than graduating. The coaching classes are all digital.
• The entrepreneur have to be accessible to attend onboarding classes facilitated by ADN and a digital Pitch Day on the conclusion of this system.

Secondary concerns in choosing builders:

• Balanced gender illustration amongst entrepreneurs in recognition of the sizable portion of African girls entrepreneurs.
• Reasonable geographic distribution. Africa consists of 54 international locations North, West, East, Central, and Southern areas. Builders ought to symbolize an inexpensive distribution throughout these areas.
• They search impression and innovation throughout sectors so they need to keep away from over-indexing on anyone of them – e.g. a number of agro or power corporations.
• Africa’s growth is 2-pronged, leveraging each for-revenue and nonprofit organizations alike. Builders ought to symbolize each genres of enterprises.

Application

Click here to apply

For extra data, go to BAF.