Some time back, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron declared that the “Startup Nation” would be undergoing a new $76 million (€65 million) digital project which will offer funding for African startups. But there were no further clarifications as to how the fund would be handled and spent.
However, TechCrunch paid a visit to the French Development Agency (AFD). And one of the highlights of their visit was getting proper clarifications as to the various areas the France’s new digital project fund will meet. TechCrunch met with the AFD Digital Task Team Leader, Christine Ha. And he explained the modalities to which the funds would be handled.
Ha explained that equity-based investments in series A to C startups would be gulping up to €50M ($58M). While €10M ($11.7M) will go into providing technical assistance to support the African ecosystem. And the remaining €5M will be made available as interest free loans to high potential, pre-seed startups.
Proparco, a development finance institution would serve as a tool to administer the $58 million in VC startup funding. Proparco has already made investment in Africa focused funds such as TLcom Capital and Partech Ventures. Grants to accelerators, hubs, incubators, and coding programmes in the continent are the forms of technical assistance to be embarked upon. Pre-seed entrepreneurs would benefit from Interest free loans up to $100,000.
Still believing that with the way this is going, it’ll prove to have a very major impact on the startup scene in Nigeria.
