The Federal Government of Nigeria has released a N300 billion seed fund to help grow tech startups and create up to 35,000 jobs in the country. The fund, according to a Vanguard report, “will work in concert with the $50 million target seed fund” that EchoVC has promised to invest in African tech startups.
During a press conference on Monday, EchoVC Managing Partner, Eghosa Omoigui said that the company has plans of investing between $25,000 to $1.5 million per startup, with the view of investing in up to fifty startups.
He added that “the fund will also opportunistically evaluate investment opportunities in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia.” He added that the specific sectors that his firm will invest in include: consumer internet and services, data, mobile, social, digital media, content and advertising, e-commerce, software, linguistics, gaming, business intelligence, last-mile and services.
Eghosa stated that part of the plan is to “fill the seed and early stage gap by providing mentorship and institutional angel funding to promising entrepreneurs and co-developing and stimulating the existing local angel community.”
EchoVC made four investments in Nigerian startups in 2015 and plan to make ten more this year. Hotels.ng, Printivo and Adbox were three of the startups that received funding from EchoVC in 2015.
