The interesting part of this platform, it is the quest to bring together young innovators with ideas that can generate profits and meet with investors who are looking for opportunities.

IGIHE has caught up with Shyaka Michael Nyarwaya, one of the brains behind Afri Global Cooperation programme. He revealed the idea behind this initiative and how they aim to change the narrative about investing in African great minds.

Tell us more about Afri Global, what is it?

Shyaka: Afri Global we are a bridge, a vehicle between investors and entrepreneurs. We are bringing a solution to connect investors and start-ups.

We want to bring those parties, investors and bring them on the board. People are struggling to access information.

We have capital ventures, people who can buy shares in your companies, people who can buy your company […] but people don’t have information and connection.

So, at Afri Global, we are really committed to connect these people, the investors and start-ups, so that everyone can gain.

People have ideas and don’t have money, people have money and don’t have ideas. How can you bring those two parties on the board?

But we still have other institutions which do the same…

Shyaka: We are beyond that. We do capacity building, because We want to train people to know how to pay taxes . You need to have a lawyer as company, an office, staff etc.

We are bringing something special, because some of the companies are not interested in the capacity building, they just bring a staff from there, they train them one or two days and start working without knowing what you are doing.

We mentor them so that they can do business in a professional way.

How will you reach people?

Shyaka: There are incubators and hubs that we want to build so that we will be bringing investors to find these people on the village, not just coming to Kigali, because not all people have access to come in Kigali.

We have to meet these people on the district level and sector. We are targeting 50,000 start-ups in five years. We want to do this in other African countries, because Afri Global is Africa on the global market.

How do you benefit from this?

Shyaka: When someone pitch and get interest, at least we will have a contract with that person in the future , and we will tell them that ‘someone invested money in your company, you got information from Afri Global. We are giving it to you for two years freely, in the next three years at least you need to give something to Afri global’. But we will do it for free in the beginning.

People are struggling to get money at the beginning. What you need to do is to impact people. When you impact people, the return will come.