French Embassy ready to support angel investors network
TANZANIA : THE French Embassy has expressed interest to support establishment of an angel investors network to bridge the existing funding gap in local innovative start-ups that stymies the scaling up of many local projects.
French Ambassador to Tanzania Mr Nabil Hajlaoui, said that the embassy will liaise with the French Tanzania Chamber of Commerce (FTCC) and arrange a specific engagement with business angels who have experience in funding start-up projects.
Ambassador Hajlaoui was speaking at his residence when he hosted a delegation that had visited France for about a fortnight through the Innoversity Project Mobility Programme.
During the meeting, Sahara Ventures Chief Operations Officer (COO) Mr Musa Kamata who was also part of the delegation that visited France, hinted that one important takeaway from the trip was meeting with representatives from MELIES Business Angels.
“The association was started two decades ago so they have massive experience and I was impressed on how they run their angel network because we in Tanzania, specifically Sahara Ventures, have been looking for the best approach to start an angel investors network and lucky enough we have a partnership with FTCC who already play the role of mentors,” he said.
Mr Kamata said that at the moment they are learning more on how to make the best use of the French angel investors network’s modality and experience so they can establish a similar network in the country to bring more opportunities and funding for local start-ups.
“As we all understand that we do not have concrete venture capital in Tanzania and using their modality could be a great opportunity to establish something similar and go beyond mentoring and starting to provide funding for start-ups,” he said.
An angel investor is basically one who provides initial seed money for startup businesses, usually in exchange for ownership equity. MELIES Business Angels is an association based in Montpellier, France, that brings together more than one hundred investors in order to finance and support companies.
Following Mr Kamata’s briefing, Ambassador Hajlaoui said that to help move the idea forward the embassy will organise an event to build up on the positive work being done by the mentors and to bring in money in addition to the mentoring.
“On this specific idea do not hesitate to come back to me, we will try to work with FTCC to have a specific meeting on how to gather business angels or people who are used to funding these start-up projects because the representative of French international groups based here are not necessarily the ones to be working on this matter,” the ambassador said.
Innoversity project is a two-year project funded by the French Embassy in Tanzania in the tune of 1.4bn/- and is implemented by Sahara Ventures. Three universities benefit from the project which are Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (Arusha) and the University of Iringa.
Sahara Ventures Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mr Jumanne Mtambalike, who was also part of the delegation of 12 people that visited France said that one major gap in the country’s ecosystem is lack of angels for early-stage investment which inhibits further investments from institutions and international organisations.
“There are no local investors showing interest in injecting funds in local start-ups, so instead of having a network of mentors, we have our eyes on establishing a network of mentors and angels so that they would not only be mentoring but also providing seed funds to companies and build confidence among international and regional investors,” he said.
