Off they go, to Ghana.
Word reaching us is that eight individuals from Nigeria have been selected to participate in the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology’s resident incubation programme.
All the expenses are covered by MEST, for the two year duration of the programme. The Nigerians will spend the first year in Ghana learning about technology and business, and the final year in Lagos where they will get down to business building, well, their businesses.
Apart from the immense world of opportunity that the programme inherently affords the participating trainees, the entrepreneurs in training are also eligible to secure up to $250,000 in seed funding via the MEST incubator programme. MEST takes equity in the incubated startups, but pending our inquiry, it is not clear how much is typical. Sources say the size of the take varies by transaction size.
Update: MEST representatives have informed TechCabal that MEST typically invests anything from $50 – $200,000 in compelling businesses for a minority stake.
Interest in Nigerian startups and entrepreneurs has been on the rise in the past year, with local and international accelerators setting up shop in Lagos since early 2014. The Meltwater incubator has been in Ghana since 2008, but recently announced its extension of the programme to Nigeria with a call for applications in June.
MEST for its part is clearly serious about its focus on Nigeria. The description on their website’s about page now reads that the school is focused on training entrepreneurs in Ghana and Nigeria. While we are waiting for the official list of new entrepreneurs in training, I am aware that Ayo Dawodu, the convener of the Nigerian chapter of Lean Startup Machine, and Esther Olatunde, (who interestingly is leaving us to participate in the programme, we’re so proud) are part of the first set of Nigerians to be accepted into MEST.
This is a developing story.
Correction: The headline of an earlier version of this post read that eight Nigerian entrepreneurs were accepted into MEST’s incubator. MEST representatives have reached out to say that eleven entrepreneurs were accepted, that that they were accepted into MEST’s training school which is separate from the incubator.
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