Are you an African start-up transforming agriculture with technology or tech-enabled innovation? Are you ready to scale your impact and attract investment?
The Scaling Agriculture Innovations through Start-ups – SAIS – Investment Readiness Programme is a free, year-long, tailor-made support programme for African start-ups creating impact in the agricultural sector … whether directly or through areas like 🌱climate, 🐄livestock, ⚡energy, 🧬biotech, 💰fintech, ♻️circular economy, 🚚logistics, or other agri-adjacent sectors.
The programme helps you get investor-ready and grow through customised advisory, targeted technical support, and access to a vibrant community of founders, experts, and investors.
What is offered
A one-year, fully funded, tailor-made support programme including:
- Up to €20,000 in technical assistance budget for consultancies, expert support, legal advice, online marketing, licenses, certifications, ESG governance, product optimisation, market entry strategies, customer acquisition & sales campaigns, marketing & PR, graphic design, employee training, and more.
- Access to revolving working capital loans of up to €50,000 with 9-month maturity at 1.5% interest.
- Up to €10,000 in digital agency advisory from an international IT consultancy firm to strengthen your digital capacities, marketing skills and data analytics.
- Fully sponsored trips to two in-person community events back-to-back with the Africa Tech Summit in Nairobi (February of each year), and one additional sector conference.
- Investment and partnership facilitation through invite-only pitch sessions with a curated network of investors, bespoke introductions to investors & funds, guidance on fundraising strategy and due diligence.
- A community of 100+ portfolio companies.
Companies to be considered
Applicant companies will be evaluated against business model, technology, team, impact and traction. Special consideration is given to companies with local founders and gender-diverse founding teams. To be eligible for the programme, your company should demonstrate the following:
How the programme works
We are not a bootcamp, we do not take equity, and we do not force you to attend generic workshops. Here’s what we do instead: We will assign your start-up a dedicated advisor from our team to work with you one-on-one through virtual check-ins and develop a custom roadmap tailored to your needs. Together with your advisor, you will identify your pressing pain points and deploy the programme services accordingly.
If selected, start-ups should be committed to:
- Nominate a management team member who dedicates an average of two hours per week to the programme and who serves as a focal point for SAIS for the duration of the programme.
- Nominate and dispatch one employee for at least two in-person community events (Feb. 2026 and Feb 2027, most likely in Nairobi).
- Provide data on the company’s progress and growth from the start of the programme until at least one year after the end of the programme, including but not limited to data on: revenue, number of users, customers, funds raised and number of employees (Note that this data will only be collected to track the progress of each start-up in compliance with data protection requirements).
- Facilitate access to customers or clients for an impact evaluation of your product/service/technology through surveys.
- Collaborate with contracted experts and service providers to implement targeted technical support measures (this may include sharing relevant business data and documents to support needs assessments).
Programme Timeline
| Sunday, 28 September 2025 | Deadline to apply. |
| Monday, 20 October to Friday 31 October 2025 | Interviews conducted with longlisted applicants. |
| By Friday, 14 November 2025 | The selection decision is communicated to all applicants. |
| End of November 2025 | Virtual Kick-off and Onboarding of the 2026 cohort. |
| December 2025 to February 2026 | Appointment and on-site visit by your SAIS advisor, joint action planning for your support needs. |
| February 2026 | In-person community event back-to-back with Africa Tech Summit in Nairobi, Kenya (SAIStival 2026), bringing together the 2026 cohort and alumni start-ups. |
| March 2026 to February 2027 | Deployment of the investment readiness programme services & budget for your support needs, an additional conference visit and virtual check-ins with your SAIS advisor. |
| February 2027 | In-person graduation from the programme at SAIStival 2027 and welcoming of the new cohort. |
Who we are
The SAIS Investment Readiness Programme 2026 is offered by ‘Scaling Agriculture Innovations through Start-ups (SAIS)’, a project implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and co-funded by the Gates Foundation. You can find more information about us here or on our LinkedIn.
AfroScientric 