Village Capital Completes First Place-Based Entrepreneur Support Organization Training Program in Uganda

Kampala, Uganda (July 23, 2021) - Village Capital recently completed its first-ever place-based ESO accelerator, supporting thirteen locally-led entrepreneur support organizations (incubators, accelerators and other SGB-focused intermediaries) in Uganda.

The program, Uganda Ecosystem Builders 2020, was run in partnership with the Argidius Foundation and helped thirteen Ugandan ESOs build their capacity for fundraising, strategic development, and impact. The curriculum centered around Village Capital’s ESO diagnostic tool, which helps ESOs identify a pathway to financial sustainability and impact.

“ESOs in Uganda play a critical role in helping early-stage entrepreneurs and SMEs through programs, mentoring, and investor connections,” said Mary Mwangi, Program Manager at Argidius Foundation. “But they often lack consistent funding, or receive restrictive grants. This program focused on helping these leaders build their capacity to fundraise, to help them make strategic investments around team, tech, R&D, and curriculum development.”

The program represented the latest evolution of Village Capital’s work to support locally-led ESOs in countries around the world. Village Capital has directly supported more than one hundred ESOs around the world, including sixty-four in Africa since 2018.

“Three years ago, we brought our ‘accelerator for accelerators’ approach to Africa, with VilCap Communities Africa,” said Adedana Ashebir, Village Capital’s Regional Director for Africa and Middle East. “We’d learned through our work in Africa since 2012 that ESOs were effectively startups supporting other startups. This place-based program was a chance to offer even more directed support , and inUganda, a nation with notable entrepreneurship rates globally.”

At the end of the program, six of the thirteen ESOs were chosen to receive milestone-based grant funding throughout 2021-22 to implement their strategic performance plan. Two were selected by their peers as an adaptation of Village Capital’s tested peer-selected investment process. An additional four were selected by a grant selection committee. The six chosen organizations were:

• Finding XY is an innovation centre and business advisory firm that supports Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) and ecosystem builders by providing bespoke one-on-one support services and designing and implementing entrepreneur support programs.
• Goldstone Consulting provides consulting and training services to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the agriculture, renewable energy, manufacturing, and water and sanitation sectors to support their growth and help them access financing.
• Hive Colab is an open, community-owned, co-working hub for young tech entrepreneurs in Kampala. It offers digital entrepreneurs internet access and a professional working environment to develop their ideas, hold events, and collaborate. It also provides training and mentorship services to startups to guide them in starting and scaling their businesses.
• Kyusa is a nonprofit business training organisation supporting early-stage youth entrepreneurs in low-income communities to create sustainable Micro and Small Enterprises and accelerate their business growth.
• Makerere Innovation and Incubation Center is a government- and donor-backed innovation and incubation centre based at Makerere University. It specialises in ideation and product development, focusing on technology-enabled ventures in energy, agriculture, education, health, finance, and ICT.
• StartHub Africa is an NGO that supports entrepreneurs to build scalable and innovative businesses with the potential to improve people’s lives.

The program consisted of two intensive boot camps with technical training sessions, mentor advisory sessions, guest speakers and peer due diligence sessions. Each ESO was provided 1:1 support by a business analyst to develop their strategic plan for funding, including identifying priorities, costing, operating consideration, and fundraising.

The curriculum incorporated two key elements of Village Capital programming:

• The ESO diagnostic tool, which helps ESOs track their development on a number of
  milestones, from Team to Curriculum to Business Model.
• Peer-selected investment, a process that allows ESOs to perform due diligence on each
  other and select their peers to receive funding based on their progress on the milestones.

About Argidius Foundation

Argidius promotes the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in order to improve the lives of the poor through increased income generation. Argidius supports inclusive economic growth as one of the primary drivers of change in low-income countries. Argidius believes that the development of SMEs is critical to achieving sustainable development. Businesses create employment and generate income and are, therefore, key to reducing poverty. In developing countries, the small business sector is relatively under-served, resulting in what is known as the “missing middle”. By supporting the emergence of an effective, attractive and viable ecosystem of SME development services, Argidius can help build SME capacity, improve their productivity and sustainability, and extend their access to markets and finance. In this way, Argidius leverages resources to create positive change.