Djassi Africa is expanding to Brazil with the Afropreneurs Fellowship

Djassi Africa, an organization based in the United Kingdom and founded by Fernando Cabral and Rudolphe Cabral, with the mission of advancing and backing African and Afro-diasporan innovators building tech-enabled startups to solve the world’s greatest challenges, is expanding to Brazil after establishing a footprint in Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe in the past four years.

Brazil is a very strategic market for Djassi Africa, which is planning to collaborate with the different pillars of the Brazilian startup and entrepreneurship ecosystem and contribute to level the playing field for Black Founders in the country.

As its first initiative in Brazil, Djassi Africa just launched the Afropreneurs Brasil Fellowship with the aim of increasing the presence, visibility, and success rate of Black Founders in global innovation and entrepreneurship stages, including leading events and acceleration programmes. It’s imperative to increase the representation of all underrepresented and underserved groups across these global stages, as the lack of diversity and equity is costing entrepreneurship ecosystems returns, talent, and innovation. This agenda is not about charity, but economics and humanity.

The first Fellowship cohort includes 23 tech startups led by Brazilian Black Founders, building impactful and scalable business across multiple industries, and solving Brazil’s greatest challenges. Different levels of representation were also factored into the cohort, including gender, with 52% of women-led startups, geographical, with more than 30% of the startups not being based in Rio de Janeiro or S?o Paulo, and industry, with more than 15 industries covered.

As part of the 10-week Fellowship programme, these 23 startups participated in Web Summit Rio 2024, one of the largest technology events in the world, where they got the chance to exhibit, pitch on stage, and deliver keynote speeches. The Fellowship programme also includes strategic coaching and advisory from Djassi Africa, and access to multiple opportunities across Djassi Africa’s network and ecosystem. At the end of the programme, this group of Fellows will join the global Afropreneurs community, with founders from Africa, Europe, and USA.

Djassi Africa is already planning other ecosystem building initiatives in Brazil until the end of 2024, as well as onboarding the first Brazilian startups in its investment portfolio.