#Africa4Future Aerospace Acceleration Programme Opens

Airbus BizLab and GIZ have announced the launch of the third edition of #Africa4Future, a joint accelerator program between Airbus’ global aerospace accelerator, BizLab and Make-IT in Africa, a programme by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit German (GIZ), the German agency for International Cooperation.

First launched in 2017, the #Africa4Future initiative was created by Airbus BizLab with the objective to encourage and support entrepreneurship in Africa. Through #Africa4future, Airbus seeks to build bridges between the aerospace industry and the different players in Africa.

For this third edition, the accelerator is open to African start-ups, service providers, software companies that are actively working on solutions in Agriculture and infrastructure sectors that are related to remote-sensing technology. This includes automation, blockchain, artificial intelligence, data analytics, material composites,           manufacturing and more. Infrastructure refers to transportation/logistics mapping, water monitoring, waste management, real estate, urban development and other related areas.

To foster and promote the inclusion of sustainable Industry innovation and infrastructure  (SDG 9); and Food security, nutrition and agriculture (SDG 2); Airbus BizLab together with its partners will consolidate and make their resources available to the startups to support economic development across Africa (SDG 17).

The 3-month programme will include virtual coaching sessions, expert sessions with  Airbus experts in Europe, connection to industry experts locally, access to Airbus technologies, 250,000 up42 credit, showcase events in Africa and Europe.

At the end of the programme, the startups (either standalone or as a consortium) will have the amazing opportunity to pitch a project to the leadership team at Airbus and GIZ for possible collaboration with both organizations.

The program is implemented by Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB), a Pan-African innovation center with a track record of accelerating the application of social capital and technology for economic prosperity. CcHUB will provide strategic support and practical industry know-how to the startups to engage multiple stakeholders within their ecosystem and facilitate the connection with these global organizations.

Applications are now open and startups can apply from today until 14th March, 2020.