Askya Opens AI Growth Programme for African Startups

After nearly six years working across venture capital and development finance, Babacar Seck, former chief executive of Digital Africa and founding member of Proparco's €300 million ($341 million) Venture Capital program, kept running into the same problem.

"There's not that much business development, company-building support to founders on the continent [Africa]," he says. "And that was a real gap."

Putting money into a startup is one thing. Helping build the company is another. Seck wants Askya to do the latter, launching an AI growth platform that combines company-building support with startup investment.

"We're investing in the ambition, but we're a stakeholder that contributes to creating the value that we want to see," he says.

As a first step, Askya is opening applications for a six-week pan-African company-building programme for African startups where AI is a core part of the value proposition. Ten companies will be selected, with Askya able to invest up to $200,000 in a cohort startup, although taking part in the programme doesn't guarantee funding.

Askya is looking for two kinds of AI startups

The first kind is startups building AI themselves, and the other includes companies using AI to materially improve an existing real-world solution.

"Do they even have capabilities internally, whether it is having a co-founder or teams that are capable of developing AI models for their applications?" Seck shares, explaining further who falls under the first group. "Or are they really enabling something that wasn't possible before on the continent?"

The second category is what Seck calls "AI for the real economy." For these companies, simply using AI internally isn't enough. The technology needs to materially improve the solution they're building.

"We really look for AI that makes a difference in increasing the impact of the solution," Seck says.

In both cases, Seck's emphasis is less on the technology itself than on what it enables the company to do. The programme is open to startups from MVP to Series A, but there's one requirement: the product has to be live.

"So, the minimum that we require is that there is a live working product. It needs to be live in a pilot or with a paying customer. We need to see that there's a product and that there's market interest in the solution."

Askya is targeting companies that are still figuring out what works before they reach product-market fit. At this stage, founders are still testing their product, finding the right market and figuring out how to grow, the phase Seck says is when a company's DNA gets shaped.

Africa's AI sector has drawn over $1.3 billion in funding since 2014, according to a 2026 industry survey. The median deal size was $225,000. Also, the African Development Bank has estimated that AI could add up to $1 trillion to the continent's GDP by 2035.

Coaching, then growth

The six weeks are split between coaching and growth enablement.

Askya says founders will work with experienced builders across technology, operations, product, and sales, while also getting introductions to customers and suppliers and access to talent and digital infrastructure. It adds that the programme includes weekly one-on-one coaching, workshops, masterclasses, and structured corporate meetups.

Timing also matters to Seck.

"The later a company is in its life, the harder these interventions become. Either you figured it out or maybe you got it wrong, but it's a little harder to address when you come much later in the process," he says.

The programme is designed to be remote-first, with the cohort coming together in person for its public reveal at Moonshot by TechCabal in Lagos on October 28–29.

The $200,000 isn't guaranteed

Taking part in the programme doesn't mean every company will receive a share of the $200,000 commitment.

"We did not want to structure it like that," Seck says. Selection for the funding comes later and separately, decided, he says, by "an evaluation made by us and our investment committee of which companies are the best fit."

When the investment does come, it's expected to be structured as equity, with terms shaped by the stage of the company receiving it.

Seck describes $200,000 as a floor rather than a ceiling.

"This amount is the public commitment," he says. "We have to put something that we know we're going to do for certain. But we have capacity for more. And, ideally, we intend to do more."

Askya's current programme page describes the potential investment as up to $200,000, while also stating that participation creates no obligation on either side.