UK’s TBI Teams with Norway’s Katapult to Support African Startups

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) is partnering with Norwegian-based accelerator Katapult to support African impact-tech startups.

Katapult is an investment and impact acceleration company which already hosts 15 African startups in its portfolio, and will mark the new partnership by entering the Rwandan market with an agriculture-tech accelerator in Kigali.

TBI, meanwhile, works to equip political leaders and governments around the world with the necessary tools to create open and inclusive societies that prosper within a globalised world.

The new partnership will involve supporting the best impact-tech entrepreneurs across the African continent by enhancing the ability for startups to scale by strengthening the tech ecosystem and channelling global and regional investments towards them.

The project, which is funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), will carry out accelerator and investor training programmes, as well as providing access to an investor network to support startups.

TBI’s executive director for Africa, Rishon Chimboza, said that “scalable businesses can play a vital role in Africa’s economic future, and given the right support, with public and private sectors working together, they can grow rapidly.”

Meanwhile, Tharald Nustad, founder and owner of Katapult, specified the project’s aims as to help create new jobs, drive economic development, and provide capital for new and innovative solutions for food security in Rwanda and the wider region.

“The timing for scalable tech solutions is now, and with fast growing urbanisation, a tech savvy young population, we are ready to build the future of tech business from Rwanda,” he said.

“We both share the belief that building rapidly scalable businesses in collaboration with both public and private parties is one of the best ways to solve the grand challenges the world is facing.”