Welcome note by former German President Prof. Dr Horst Köhler

for the AGYLE Berlin Week 2022

Team “Wakanda”: An African-German Accelerator MBA Programme

The idea of “Team Wakanda”: an African-German MBA programme for founders that also acts as an accelerator and is partly financed by venture capital.

For the participating founders, the advantages are obvious: They can acquire higher education in the form of a recognised MBA degree and, at the same time, work further on developing their companies. Theoretical knowledge obtained in the MBA programme is applied directly to their start-ups.

And VCs and impact investors also gain from their involvement: They identify worthwhile investments at an early stage, and benefit from trained founders and new contacts in Africa's growth markets.

Team Wakanda’s pitch explains exactly how the model is supposed to work:

Team “AGYLE Eagles”: MATCHXPERT - Finding Experts Worldwide

The idea of team “AGYLE Eagles”: a platform that helps companies find experts worldwide for a wide range of business challenges.

This is not just automated matchmaking, where an algorithm pairs data from online profiles. The platform with the working title "MATCHXPERTS" takes uses an elaborated process to verify the consulting skills offered, provides support in the execution and structuring of contracts and evaluates completed consulting projects.

The “AGYLE Eagles” team’s pitch explains exactly how the model is supposed to work:

Team “Change Drivers”: Farm Assist - Problem Solving for Small-Scale Farmers

The idea of team “Change Drivers": A knowledge and marketing platform for small-scale farmers in Africa, from which farmers who cannot read and write can also benefit.

The project with the working title "FarmAssist" is intended to be a universal problem-solver for farmers in Africa and thus help them to achieve better incomes, with training in crop rotation and business management, climate and weather as well as market mechanisms.

To this end, the project recruits young Africans who have a relatively good education but see few opportunities in the labour market and are therefore interested in independent professional futures as farmers. They pass on theoretical knowledge to experienced but mostly poorly educated farmers, who in turn provide practical agricultural knowledge to the newcomers. Finally, FarmAssist also establishes contact with customers in Europe and organises the direct sale of agricultural products.

The Change Drivers’ pitch explains how all this plays together, how the model is financed and how it is to be a win-win for all involved:

Team “African-German Light Bulbs”: Loan. Made. By. Trust.

The team "African-German Light Bulbs" addresses the problem of high loan-interest rates in Africa with the following idea:

An app with the working title "Loan. Made. By. Trust." adds another party to loan transactions beyond the lender and borrower: guarantors. These can be employers, but also family members in the diaspora. The person or persons seeking a loan register on the platform and first upload the usual information about themselves and their financing project -- supplemented by the contact to a person willing to vouch for them.

In a marketplace that is also part of the app, banks from Africa and Europe can now compete with each other to finance projects, thanks to the guarantee and resulting lower risk of default, and at significantly lower interest-rates than are usual in the African market.

The details of this FinTec business case are presented in the team’s pitch:

Team “Happy Earthlings”: ELT - Simplify Electrifying!

With their idea, the "Happy Earthlings" team aims to tackle two problems at once: inadequate power supply in many African countries and the increasing demand for affordable green energy in Europe.

In essence, the idea is to use solar energy to produce hydrogen in Africa, which can then be transported to rural areas and used for decentralised power generation. In this way, clean electricity can reach local people, even without a developed electricity grid. The surplus hydrogen is then collected and exported to Europe at low cost by ship or pipeline and can also be used there to generate clean energy.

How this model can be implemented technically and financed, and how a win-win situation is created for African and European countries is explained by the “Happy Earthlings” team’s pitch: