NBA Africa Announces  Prize-Winning Startups for Second Accelerator Demo Day

NBA Africa, during the week, announced the five prize-winning startup companies from the second edition of NBA Africa Triple-Double Accelerator, which the league launched last year to support the continent’s technology ecosystem and the next generation of African entrepreneurs.

The five winning companies are; Reborn (Morocco), Fitclan (Egypt), Athlon Technology (Egypt), Atsur (Nigeria) and Songdis (Nigeria) – were awarded financial support and the opportunity to join Carnegie Mellon University Africa’s (CMU-Africa) 12-month Business Incubation Program as part of its Innovation Hub, which helps African tech startups transform proof-of-concept prototypes and preliminary market assessments into scalable, market-ready products and services (valued at up to $70,000).

The top three companies also each received $10,000 in Application Programming Interface (API) credits and an immersion day with the OpenAI engineering team at OpenAI’s headquarters.

The 10 finalists, which were selected from more than 700 applicants across 32 African countries, pitched their products to a panel of international industry leaders at a Demo Day today at CMU-Africa in Kigali, Rwanda.  The judges were CMU-Africa Director Dr Conrad Tucker, OpenAI Africa Lead Emmanuel Lubanzadio, and ServiceNow Africa Vice President & Managing Director Cheick Camara and Head of Strategy & Operations Nikki van Gasse.

The Demo Day was supported by CMU-Africa, ServiceNow and OpenAI.  ALX Ventures once again served as the Official Operating Partner of the program in its second year.  Together, the partners are contributing distinct expertise to strengthen the support for early-stage African startups.

“We continue to be amazed by the creative, talented and passionate entrepreneurs who participate in NBA Africa Triple-Double Accelerator,” said NBA Africa CEO Clare Akamanzi.

“The 10 finalists and five prize-winning companies differentiated themselves through their bold and innovative solutions that are shaping the future of sport and entertainment in Africa.  The support they receive from this program will help them scale their products and make a lasting impact on the continent and globally,” he remarked.

(L-R) OpenAI Africa Lead, Emmanuel Lubanzadio, ALX Ventures Africa Lead, Nour Abdelghaffar, ServiceNow Head of Strategy & Operations, Nikki van Gasse, Carnegie Mellon University Africa Director Dr Conrad Tucker, NBA Africa CEO Clare Akamanzi, ServiceNow Africa Vice President & Managing Director Cheick Camara, and NBA Africa Triple-Double Accelerator winners Adaobi Orajaiku (Atsur), Melody Nehemiah (Songdis), Hani Youssef Hafez (Athlon Technology), Omar El Gebali (Fitclan) and Youssef Maaroufi (Reborn) (Credit: NBA Africa)