A student and alumni-led initiative at Yale University with a mission to showcase stories of innovation and ingenuity from the African Startup Ecosystem
NEW HAVEN, April 27, 2024 — Today, the Yale Africa Startup Review (‘YASR’) published its Fourth Annual #YASR30 List featuring 30 startups and 30 stories representing 12 countries shaping the future of Africa. YASR is also hosting a full-day conference at Tsai City in New Haven that will feature panels and speeches on a variety of prevalent topics such as investing in startups, scaling companies, acquiring talent, and macro trends affecting startups across the African continent. According to student editor Olushola (‘Shola’) Aina, “the conference is an exciting opportunity to learn about both YASR and the key trends shaping the African startup ecosystem.”
As in previous editions, the YASR editorial team remained committed to its collaborative, grassroots approach to source and select a list of startups that showcases stories of innovation and ingenuity from across the African continent. The featured 30 in this edition of the list are early-stage companies that span the investment spectrum from pre-seed to Series A and are involved in a wide-variety of industries from the burgeoning CleanTech and AI ecosystems, to the more traditional Transportation and Agriculture sectors. Indeed, according to YASR judge Joseph Benson Aruna of DFS Labs who helped select the companies, “this year’s list accurately captures the dynamic mix of real-economy and technology startups disrupting African economies.”
While Nigeria once again led the way in the number of startups selected with 11, the 2024 Review features firms from less heralded start-up cultures such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, and for the first time Namibia. This addition also has strong representation from North Africa, with 4 startups from Egypt and one firm from Morocco in the Review. Healthcare, transportation and logistics, and e-commerce were the most represented sectors with five startups each. We are looking forward to working with and sharing the stories of these firms such as Tololi Market, a Namibian e-commerce platform that connects buyers to food suppliers, Ramani, a Y-Combinator backed Tanzanian fintech firm building cutting supply chain finance solutions, and Yene Health, a Ethiopian health-tech firm with innovative products for women.
We owe our gratitude to our partners and corporate sponsors: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Github, Zendesk, MongoDB, Twilio, HubSpot, Amplitude, and Ingressive for Good. We also want to thank this year’s student editors: Shola, Dean, Didace, Kemi, and Amar; and our alumni editors: Samuel, Lina, Sharon, Khalid, Daniel, and Christopher. Finally, we are very grateful for the attendance of the keynote speaker at the YASR conference on April 27th: Patrick Njoroge - The Former Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya. Patrick will discuss how African central bank policy and financial regulation impacts the startup and venture capital ecosystem before hosting a fireside Q&A later in the day. “I am honored to be the keynote speaker at the YASR 2024 conference and to support startups in not only Kenya but throughout the African continent,” said Patrick.
You can learn more about the YASR 30 list and the conference on our website or our vibrant social media platforms - LinkedIn, X & Instagram - that garner over 50K impressions monthly.
Press contacts:
Olushola Aina, Editor, olushola.aina@yale.edu
Christopher Wayland, Editor, christopher.wayland@yale.edu
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