The companies will also join Madica’s intensive 18-month support programme, designed to help early-stage founders build scalable, investment-ready businesses.

Madica is seeking to close Africa’s funding gap by backing founders and startups usually overlooked by traditional venture capital. 

Since launching in 2022, the programme has focused on entrepreneurs from underrepresented regions and industries, providing capital and the kind of mentorship as well as structure that can make or break early ventures.

Both startups bring artificial intelligence into real-world African contexts. Anavid, founded by Ahmed Chaari and David Nilsson, uses AI to integrate with retail surveillance systems, reducing theft losses and improving in-store experience. 

Hypeo AI, led by Meriam Bessa and Salah Eddine Mimouni, provides a software solution that automates influencer marketing, from brand matching to campaign payments.

For Madica, these investments will help enhance innovation, which is also thriving across Africa, not just in a few well-known hubs.

“At Madica, we believe and continue to prove that some of the world’s most transformative ideas come from places that are too often ignored,” said Emmanuel Adegboye, head of Madica. “The founders we’ve just welcomed are visionaries, building solutions with the power to uplift communities and shape industries. We’re proud to stand with them as they take on the next stage of their journey.”

For the founders, the partnership provides access to Madica’s growing investor network, business coaching, and two fully funded immersion trips to leading tech ecosystems both within and outside Africa. 

These trips, part of Madica’s structured learning model, give founders a platform to engage directly with investors, mentors, and other founders solving similar challenges.

Speaking on Hypeo AI’s mission, Meriam Bessa, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said, “Our region is rapidly growing with creative energy, but without the right digital backbone, it often goes untapped. We’re changing that by using AI to reimagine how brands and creators find each other, collaborate, and thrive. Backing by Madica will help us strengthen our AI capabilities to achieve this goal.”

Madica has also partnered with the African Business Angel Network (ABAN) to expand deal flow and co-investment opportunities for its portfolio companies. The collaboration, unveiled at the ABAN Congress in Lagos, aims to improve access to local capital and connect angel investors with institutional partners.

According to Yemi Keri, President of ABAN, “The future of Africa’s innovation economy depends on how effectively we can mobilise local capital and empower local investors. Our collaboration with Madica helps bridge the gap between angel investors and institutional capital, ensuring that more funding comes from within the continent, and that startups everywhere in Africa can access the right type of support to scale.”

Madica’s portfolio already includes a mix of standout startups such as Medikea, Daleela, Pixii Motors, and ToumAI, with a strong focus on gender diversity and regional inclusion. 

Its model combines funding with hands-on learning, helping founders refine governance, growth strategy, and personal well-being, areas often neglected in early-stage business building.

To date, Madica has continued to scout for new investment opportunities across the continent. Eligible startups must have a minimum viable product (MVP), ideally with paying customers, and be led by full-time African founders with limited prior institutional backing.

The team recently participated in Moonshot by TechCabal in Lagos and is heading to Big Angels Day Africa in Dakar this October, part of its approach to meet founders where they are, and to bring early-stage capital closer to the people shaping Africa’s digital future.

Across the continent, founders are building products at record pace, but too many fail to scale. While African startups raised $2.6 billion in venture capital in 2024, a decline from 2023, poor user experience and weak product design have been among the top reasons why early-stage ventures collapse. 

It’s no coincidence that between 2022 and 2024, design thinking adoption among African startups rose by over 30%. Though uneven across sectors, this shows that technology without human-centred design rarely survives, leaving scale and retention elusive.

This is where Lucky Ekezie steps in. A product designer, mentor, and AI advocate, Lucky has made it his mission to build systems that don’t just look good but actually work for people, driving adoption, retention and measurable growth.

He transforms scarcity into opportunity, creating solutions that make startups investor-ready, user-ready, and scalable.

“Design isn’t just about interfaces,” he says. “It’s about people, resilience, and building systems that help others thrive.”

From his early days in Umuahia, where he built toys from scraps of wood and tin, to designing Bosscab, a ride-hailing platform for African cities, and Syncventory, an inventory management tool for SMEs, Lucky has turned curiosity into impact. 

Beyond products, he mentors emerging designers, develops AI-driven productivity solutions, and creates frameworks that help startups survive and scale where others fail.

Reimagining Tools for African Realities

In 2020, when the pandemic forced businesses across Africa to rethink operations, Lucky joined Nugi Technologies. There, he helped build Bosscab and Syncventory, platforms designed with Africa in mind, not Silicon Valley copies; they were tailored to local infrastructure, culture and user behaviour.

At Nugi, he mentored younger designers, embedding curiosity and user-first thinking into the culture. That kind of mindset shift is exactly what Africa’s growing ecosystem needs. 

In Q1 2025 alone, 83% of AI startup funding in Africa was concentrated in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt, but funding without solid design foundations risks being wasted. Lucky’s work shows how product design can bridge that gap.

Lessons From Failure

Lucky’s resilience is built on hard lessons. His first startup, Gianx, shut down due to funding challenges, but it became his training ground in business structure and timing. 

Those lessons later informed his contributions to My Skool Tool, a school management platform founded by ThankGod Maduka Kalu. Today, it serves over 10,000 students, a direct result of design choices that prioritised usability and scalability.

Where many see failure as an end, Lucky treats it as raw material, the same way he once treated tin containers and wood scraps as a child.

A Mentor Building People, Not Just Products

By 2023, Lucky had expanded his mission beyond building products to building people. At LM Tech Hub, he mentored aspiring African designers trying to break into tech. Later, at CareerFoundry, he began teaching design thinking and product development to learners worldwide.

The results are measurable. Over 80% of CareerFoundry graduates secure jobs within six months, with mentorship ranked as one of the strongest success factors. For Lucky, it’s more than statistics. Mentorship is about instilling confidence. 

For a continent where over 5,000 young professionals transitioned into tech careers through incubators since 2020, his work sits inside a bigger story, where Africa’s design uprising is being shaped by teachers, not just by tools.

At the Edge of Africa’s AI Boom

Africa’s AI market is projected to hit $4.51 billion in 2025, growing at more than 26% annually. By 2030, AI could contribute up to $2.9 trillion to Africa’s GDP. These are huge figures, but they mean little if Africans are not building solutions for themselves. Lucky is already positioning to ensure they do.

In 2025, he delivered a talk at Tech Flock titled “From Sci-Fi to Reality: The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence”. In it, he charted AI’s history, human impact, and opportunities for Africa. Today, he is developing an AI-driven productivity platform aimed at helping both individuals and enterprises work smarter.

While global companies like Microsoft and G42 are pouring $1 billion into AI infrastructure in East Africa, Lucky represents the individual innovators ensuring that Africa doesn’t just consume these technologies but also creates homegrown solutions.

Why Lucky’s Story Matters

Nigeria’s tech ecosystem is one of the largest in Africa, accounting for over 25% of the continent’s venture capital inflow. Lagos is a top innovation hub, but behind the statistics are challenges, including unreliable infrastructure, high failure rates, and limited mentorship pipelines. People like Lucky Ekezie are shifting that narrative.

From sketching human figures on a blackboard as a child in Umuahia to building products, mentoring global learners, and pushing Africa’s AI story forward, Lucky Ekezie embodies the resilience and creativity that African innovation demands. His career is proof that design is not secondary to technology, it is its beating heart.

And perhaps that is the real problem he is solving: proving that in Africa, technology will not thrive without design rooted in people, culture, and context.

• The Qualcomm Make in Africa 2024 program supported ten startups from six African nations, addressing challenges in healthcare, agriculture, AI, and industrial sectors.
• Nigerian startup, Kitovu, was among this year’s finalists. Founded by Nwachinemera Emeka, Kitovu is revolutionizing agriculture with its WareGuard smart warehouse management solution, designed to reduce post-harvest losses and enhance food security for millions of farmers.
• Aurora Health Systems of Kenya was announced as the winner of the 2024 Wireless Reach Social Impact Fund.
• Applications for Qualcomm Make in Africa 2025 are now open.

Qualcomm Incorporated Tuesday announced the successful completion of the second year of its Make in Africa Startup Mentorship Program, culminating in the Make in Africa Finale 2024.

This platform continues to showcase the energy and innovation emerging from the African technology scene, demonstrating Qualcomm’s commitment to supporting startups as part of the broader Qualcomm Africa Innovation Platform.

Now in its second year, this program has successfully guided early-stage technology startups by providing mentorship, business coaching, engineering consultation, and IP protection advice.

This year’s Make in Africa finalists, from six African nations, are tackling real-world challenges across healthcare, agriculture, cutting-edge AI and industrial sectors.

The 2024 cohort includes the following startups (listed in alphabetical order):

• Aurora Health Systems from Kenya provides AI-based cardiovascular healthcare tools
• CropScan from Kenya uses solar-powered smart farming IoT devices
• Cure Bionics from Tunisia makes smart 3D printed prosthetic devices
• DevisionX from Egypt provides AI-based low-code computer vision tools
• Kalio from Cameroon is building AI tools for Agricultural IoT
• Kitovu from Nigeria provides tools and software for smart agricultural warehouse management
• NextAI Studios from Kenya builds AI-based emotion detection into toys for children’s mental healthcare
• RIM Nextgen from Kenya, uses smart tools for monitoring propane consumption
• Sparcx from South Africa uses AI for enhancing radar signal processing
• ViZmerald from Tunisia, is working on AI-based textile industry inspection

Wireless Reach Social Impact Fund Winner

Aurora Health Systems from Kenya was announced the winner of the 2024 Wireless Reach Social Impact Fund.

This fund, provided by Qualcomm through its Qualcomm Wireless Reach Initiative, aims to support startups in scaling their societal and market impact. Aurora Health Systems was selected for their innovative wireless, portable ECG device with LTE connectivity.

This device assists patients with cardiovascular disease by enabling remote data transmission of ECG data to healthcare providers, even in rural areas.

They are the first in East Africa to train ECG AI models on locally sourced data, resulting in more accurate algorithms and improved AI-powered diagnostics.

Additionally, all finalists will receive stipends to further fuel their growth and help protect their intellectual property.  

Highlighting the L2Pro Africa IP E-Learning Platform

In an effort to harness Africa’s vast potential for innovation and creativity, the L2Pro Africa IP e-learning Platform provides further support to startups across Africa.

This free online training program, developed in collaboration with Adams and Adams, Africa’s leading IP law firm, is designed to empower startups, SMEs, and researchers across the continent.

The platform provides essential knowledge and tools to protect and maximize innovations, addressing the pressing challenge of limited patent activity in Africa.

By equipping innovators with the skills needed to safeguard and commercialize their inventions, L2Pro Africa aims to unlock new economic opportunities and foster a thriving ecosystem of innovation. 

Launch of Qualcomm Make in Africa Startup Mentorship Program 2025

Building on the success of previous years, Qualcomm is excited to launch the Make in Africa 2025 program.

Applications are now open here.

“The Make in Africa startups are disrupting traditional industries and tackling socio-economic challenges, crafting innovative solutions with global market reach by using AI, advanced connectivity, and IoT,” said Wassim Chourbaji, SVP & president, Qualcomm MEA & SVP, Government Affairs EMEA. “This startup mentorship program reflects Qualcomm’s commitment to support promising early-stage deep tech startups, empowering local talents, creating jobs and driving economic growth.”