LocationsUNDP Africa Timbuktoo initiative: Nigeria hosts timXLAGOS event
August 17, 2022
The launch of timbuktoo in Nigeria is a significant milestone underpinned by a commitment to galvanize Africa’s tech-enabled startups.
Lagos, 17 August 2022 - The timbuktoo initiative, sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Africa has been launched in Nigeria with aim of mobilizing and investing one billion dollars in public and private funding over the next decade to help spur the startup revolution across Africa. The timXLAGOS event which held in Landmark center in Lagos brought together representatives from a wide range of organizations including governments, private sector, development partners, universities as well as start-ups.
Timbuktoo will be a game-changing addition to UNDP Africa's mission to transform the African continent by leveraging the African people themselves, especially its ambitious, dynamic youth, as the key to its growth and path out of poverty. Eight private-sector-driven pan-African timbuktoo hubs, each focusing on a different priority area and housing a Venture Builder and a Venture Fund, are expected to be developed across Africa. The exciting goal of timbuktoo is to foster and create "One Africa Market and beyond" startups that receive best-in-class assistance, collaborations, and local and international investment. To this end, each pan-African center will draw top startup talent from all over the continent.
Nigeria hosts timXLAGOS event
The timXLAGOS event which held in Landmark center in Lagos brought together representatives from a wide range of organizations including governments, private sector, development partners, universities as well as start-ups.
The launch of timbuktoo in Nigeria is a significant milestone underpinned by a commitment to galvanize Africa’s tech-enabled startups. The goal is for more than 1,000 startups to grow to a significant size and have a positive effect on more than 100 million people's lives and the environment, generating a ten-fold return of over ten billion dollars in wealth and value creation for Africa's economies.
Speaking at the launch event, UNDP Africa Chief Innovation Officer, Eleni Gabre-Madhin, said “Timbuktoo is a big, innovative, and unique initiative to overcome the present vacuum in early-stage risk capital, to better integrate African innovation stakeholders from universities to corporates to investors, and to enable startups to embrace the African market opportunity. We're opening a timbuktoo hub in Lagos and we hope to utilize Africa's youth brilliance to make it a worldwide knowledge and innovation powerhouse.”
UNDP Africa Chief Innovation Officer, Eleni Gabre-Madhin
The initiative is multifaceted and seeks to support and grow innovative, scalable, and impactful entrepreneurship by young Africans. It does this by relying on a springboard of partners who, when working together, make a big difference in building an innovation and startup ecosystem for young Africans. The Timbuktoo approach will be based on finding, nurturing, and building African solutions put forward by Africa's youth that directly address one or more of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“In UNDP Nigeria, we prioritize innovation. That’s why we continue to invest. So, it wasn’t hard to convince the Timbuktoo team to setup a hub here in Lagos, Nigeria. This initiative is based on the belief that to achieve the SDGs, we must work hand in hand with the private sector and embrace a bold and innovative reality in which the future will be driven by technology and innovation. It is founded on the belief that exceptional achievement by ambitious and talented young people will move the needle in Africa and allow us to finally achieve our SDG targets. Our job as UNDP is to ensure the development, success and properity of this country. That is the future we all want. “” said Mohamed Yahya, UNDP Nigeria Representative.
Mohamed Yahya, UNDP Nigeria Representative.
This programme was initiated by UNDP Africa in 2021. Its primary aim is to get a lot of private and public sector partners to help set up eight Timbuktoo Hubs in places that are known to have strong startup ecosystems, such as Accra, Nairobi, Cape Town, Lagos, Dakar, Kigali, Casablanca, and Cairo. Each Hub will be run privately and will focus on a single industry vertical, such as Fintech, Agritech, Healthtech, Greentech, Creatives, Tradetech and Logistics, Smart Cities and Mobility, or Tourismtech. The big project is built around a Parent Fund of catalytic grant capital, which, along with catalytic partners who care about making an impact, would pay for a network of Hubs and a Headquarters. The Parent Fund would also give guarantees or first-loss capital in the form of a small share to each of the commercially focused Hub Venture Funds.
Timbuktoo has made significant progress since its inception. It has also taken the lead in setting up University Innovation Pods (UniPods) at the national level in ten Lower-Income Countries in Africa (Benin, Chad, Guinea Conakry, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Togo, and Uganda) with the goal of encouraging students to engage in innovation and design thinking. The UniPods are expected to be ready for use by the end of 2022 with the hope of expanding timbuktoo's reach to 18 African countries by 2023.
According to Eleni, “We are now already setting up 10 unique pods that will be operational by the end of 2022. We hope to have the parent fund launched in 2023 and the first wave of hubs will start with four. The second wave of four hubs will start in early 2024. This is not a donor project. This is a private facing ecosystem approach. So, each of the hubs will be run by a consortium of ecosystem players. This is an opportunity to integrate and leverage the ecosystem that we already have and grow it.”
Startups, investors, government partners, innovation and accelerators hubs all participated in substantive conversations about timbuktoo and the Nigerian startup ecosystem during the timXLagos event, which was hosted in collaboration with Ventures Park and Impact hub Lagos. The event demonstrated UNDP's renewed commitment to engaging and collaborating with the private sector.
For media enquiry, please contact:
Rejoice Emmanuel, Communications Analyst, UNDP Nigeria at rejoice.emmanuel@undp.org
Tel: +234-8094944102
