MEST berths two incubator spaces in Lagos, Cape Town

MEST, an Accra-based pan-African seed fund and incubator, that has invested in over 25 seed-stage software start-ups have opened new offices in Lagos, Nigerian and Cape Town South Africa.

The new Lagos incubator space which was unveiled on Tuesday during the Lagos Startup Week will join the flagship headquartered in Accra, Ghana.

According to a statement sent to BusinessDay by MEST, the incubators in Lagos and Cape Town will act as an extension of the Accra community. Entrepreneurs under the program will benefit from skilled support, mentorship, network and resources like those seen in Accra. The entrepreneurs will also have the opportunity to participate in several curated events to bring together the African tech community.

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“With its 9-year track record in Ghana, we are glad to finally see MEST expand their footprint into Nigeria,” said Tunde Durosinmi Etti, Lagos State Commissioner for Wealth Creation and Employment, on the launch. “This new incubator in Nigeria’s economic centre, Lagos, is a strategic move towards partnering with the state government in changing the future economy of the state through its support for new businesses, empowering millennials and providing more jobs.”

The MEST Incubator facility offers hot desks and private office packages. The statement noted that MEST’s core-pillars include a one-year technology training program in Ghana for African entrepreneurs, followed by potential seed funding and incubation for MEST portfolio companies in pan-African incubator spaces.

The new co-working offering will invite local entrepreneurs to apply to join the MEST Incubator space as well, opening the community up to startups who did not graduate from the MEST training program.

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“We are extremely excited to enter the Nigerian and South African markets with the launch of our new incubator spaces,” Aaron Fu, MEST Managing Director, “Lagos and Cape Town are home to an enormous amount of ambitious tech talents with massive potential. We also look forward to welcoming companies from the larger local community to join our pan-African network of like-minded entrepreneurs.”

MEST entrepreneurs have developed solutions addressing local and global markets, received outside follow-on funding from global investors, and have gained admittance to top accelerator programs such as Y-Combinator, 500 Startups and TechStars. MEST entrepreneurs have also been selected by President Obama as representatives of the African business community at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C. and have been named Mandela Washington Fellows, a flagship program of Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI).

Corporate strategic partners include Samsung, Vodafone and Facebook’s internet.org—all of which have a shared interest in bolstering the emerging tech ecosystem in Africa as a means to economic growth.