- New direction combines acceleration, early financing and partnerships to help research-led ventures move closer to commercial growth
Open Startup, the pan-African organization supporting entrepreneurs and innovation ecosystems across Africa, has unveiled The Science Road, a new strategic direction focused on strengthening African science, deep tech and research-led innovations as they move from research into globally competitive ventures and industries.
Marking the organisation’s 10-year anniversary since its founding in Tunisia in 2016, Open Startup is entering a new phase, focusing on ventures developing solutions in health, climate, artificial intelligence, and adjacent technologies.
This move builds on a decade of work empowering more than 3,000 founders and over 1,000 startups across more than 20 African countries.
The Science Road brings together Open Startup’s programs under a unified acceleration platform, strengthening its role as a bridge between African founders, scientists, markets, partners and capital.
It also introduces Openers First, a new investment arm that will provide early-stage backing to selected ventures emerging from the platform.
The new direction builds on Open Startup’s evolution from a university entrepreneurship competition to a pan-African investment-readiness and ecosystem-building platform.
Over the past decade, the organization has connected founders with investors, corporations, universities, policymakers and international partners across Africa and globally.
Open Startup has also built a wider community of more than 500 mentors, advisors and experts, trained over 300 coaches, and supported ventures that have gone on to raise funding, create jobs and remain active beyond the program period.
“For ten years, Open Startup has worked to help entrepreneurs build ventures and access opportunities,” said Houda Ghozzi, founder and CEO of Open Startup. “As we enter our second decade, we do so with greater maturity, a broader continental footprint, and a renewed ambition. We believe the Science Road can become a runway connecting Africa’s innovators to the world, unlocking new opportunities for collaboration, investment, and scientific advancement, while helping build a new narrative between Africa and the world: one defined by contribution, innovation, and shared prosperity.”
The Science Road responds to a segment of Africa’s innovation economy that remains underserved. Science and deep tech ventures often require specialist support, stronger links with universities and industry, longer development timelines and early capital before they can reach commercial use.
Through the new platform, Open Startup will simplify its offering around two core pathways. The first will focus on pre-seed innovators translating research and breakthrough ideas into investable ventures, while the second will support seed-stage startups as they scale technologies with the potential to address major market and societal challenges.
Openers First will provide an early financing layer for selected ventures emerging from Open Startup’s platform.
The investment arm is designed to complement the organization’s investment readiness work and help promising ventures bridge the gap between pre-seed and seed-stage growth, while contributing to Open Startup’s long-term sustainability.
As part of this next phase, The Science Road will also take shape through stronger bridges between ecosystems, spanning from Tunis to South Africa, with Open Startup deepening its collaboration with partners such as CERI, Stellenbosch University and LaunchLab to support research-led founders as they move science out of the lab and closer to markets, investment and real-world adoption.
Open Startup’s work over the past decade has been supported by a wide network of partners across Africa and globally. These include KfW AfricaGrow, which helped accelerate the organization’s continental expansion, as well as AfricInvest, the United States Department of State, the European Union, Digital Africa, Bpifrance, the Drosos Foundation, the Steve Madden Foundation, Sanofi Ventures and universities such as Columbia University, Columbia Business School, MIT Sloan and MIT Africa.
With African innovation ecosystems continuing to mature, research-led ventures will require more targeted support to become commercially viable and investment-ready. Through The Science Road, the organization aims to support more African ventures as they move from discovery to company-building, growth and long-term value creation.
