Bantaba: The Bridge to African Talent and Resources
A year ago, just a few months into the pandemic, four students of African descent participated in the Climate Action Challenge by Norrsken and Sting as part of 53 out of 260 teams selected for the deep dive stage of the competition.
Lamin Darboe (in the photo on the left), Fabrice Ouedraogo, Eliane Birba, and Noufay Kafando did not win the competition but this would give birth to something different; Bantaba. Bantaba is a digital platform that connects the African diaspora with start-ups in Africa. Hardly a year since they started: “Although we didn’t win the competition, it not only taught us the diaspora’s affinity to Africa but also the level of talent in this community. I mean we had people with backgrounds in renewable energy, aerospace engineering, machine learning, and cloud computing,” Lamin who is the CEO said.
Bantaba is currently working on pre-seed fundraising efforts to move from the MVP to a full-fledged product with expanded features. It aims at providing a platform where diaspora talent and capital is accessible to African start-ups and corporations and providing relevant news updates to both parties. Most of the team members have known each other for 8 years now having been together in Taiwan for their undergraduate study which provides a basis for a very strong bond in the team.
“Our biggest edge as a team is our understanding of the problem but also the diaspora community and Africa’s start-up ecosystem. This is why the diaspora was a natural starting point for us; we understand their needs and can build a product that efficiently solves that need. But we are aware that Africa has a lot of friends and well-wishers across the world, and the platform might eventually be open to those people too in the future,” Lamin told Ambitious.Africa.
His sentiments are echoed by Eliane Birba (in the photo on the right), the power lady of the team and chief data scientist: “I met Fabrice and Noufay during my study in Taiwan. Fabrice and I went to the same university. We were classmates for 4 years. Lamin was the last person I met and that was last year. We are a team because we know each other for a while now and we also trust and care for each other. I also believe in the capacity and skills of everyone in the team to reach a milestone for this project.”
Easing the burden
According to Fabrice Ouedraogo (in the photo below), who takes up the role of the CTO, one of the current challenges start-ups in Africa face is getting access to funding.
“With the shortage of venture capital in Africa, it’s quite challenging to raise funds. So we tackle this challenge by connecting the start-ups with the diaspora which is an untapped potential. With that opportunity, the diaspora can invest in promising African start-ups listed on our platform. To do so, a start-up can launch a fundraising campaign with a specific target and ask the investors to contribute in return for a fair share of the start-up,” Fabrice explained adding that access to talents is also part of the problem: “Having a well-qualified team is important in the lifecycle of a start-up. And one fact is that the diaspora
consists of talented resources that can be used by the start-ups through multiple ways such as counseling, mentoring. Thus, Bantaba makes the connection between start-ups and the diaspora to ease the process of finding talents for start-ups.”
While Bantaba’s team is solid the main challenges for them as well have been resources and funds but they are overcoming them by getting admitted to incubation and business labs. Bantaba was recently chosen among eight other start-ups to join northern Europe's most successful unicorn-creating business accelerator, SSE Business Lab. This is the same accelerator that once hosted payment giant Klarna.
“As we know, every company runs on capital, even start-ups. This process will not only allow us to fine-tune our business idea through coaching and mentoring but also to have access to the in-house potential investor network to present our idea. We overcame it by having strategic partnerships with other companies where it’s a win-win situation for both parties allowing us to take one step closer to our vision,” Noufay Kafando (in the photo on the left), the Chief Product Officer shared.
If you are a start-up in Africa or African in the diaspora interested in investing you can sign up here to be part of their chosen few to beta test the Bantaba platform.
By: Cate Mukei