Africa’s leading EdTech accelerator Injini, is committing $125,000 to a new venture-building initiative that will take early-stage teams across Southern Africa from ideation to market-ready EdTech startups.
The eight-month AI Venture Builder and Incubation Programme, supported by Coefficient Giving, opened applications on September 7 and will select 12 pre-formed teams from nine countries. Applicants must be based in Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia or Zimbabwe.
Unlike a conventional accelerator that backs startups with existing products or traction, Injini is targeting teams still at the ideation stage. Their concepts, however, must address one of the program’s five focus areas: foundational learning; teacher capacity and classroom support; learner pathways and futures; inclusion and access; or ecosystem and engagement.
Injini requires at least two members per team, with each bringing two to three years of relevant work or lived experience. Teams must also be cross-disciplinary, comprising a builder, a domain expert and a commercial or operations lead.
In the first five months, the incubator program will validate education problems, design solutions, build functional AI-powered minimum viable products and test them with learners and educators.
The five strongest ventures will then enter a three-month incubation phase, receiving $25,000 in equity-free seed capital each, alongside support on product refinement, go-to-market strategy, financial viability and impact measurement.
Injini’s initiative comes amid a wider problem in Africa’s EdTech sector: many products are built without sufficient evidence that they work for the classrooms and learners they target. Research from the LEO Impact Fund found that more than 93% of EdTech products in low- and middle-income countries have not been tested for learning impact.
Injini’s venture builder is an attempt to close that gap. “We’ve spent years engaging with brilliant people across the region who understand education problems intimately, but lack the team, capital, or clear path to build a solution,” said Krista Davidson, executive director of Injini. “Add to this that Africa is significantly underrepresented in the data training AI tools. If we don’t build our own solutions now, we risk EdTech that simply doesn’t work for African classrooms. This venture builder is aimed at closing these gaps.”
Injini is consequently positioning the programme around user-testing rather than simply building. The programme brief indicates that teams will have access to real-user testing, learning scientists, AI engineers and education specialists, while monitoring and evaluation systems will be used to assess whether products are actually effective.
The 12 selected teams will begin the venture-building phase in November, with the five ventures entering incubation from April to June 2027. Applications close on September 27, with submissions reviewed on a rolling basis.
