Opportunity Title: Hubiquitous - Africa-Europe Accelerator Entrepreneurs Program 2022 (€5000 prize)

Hubiquitous has launched an open call for its Africa-Europe Accelerator program to accelerate 20 innovators in cross-border uptake and deployment of IoT digital solutions in five key sectors. The objective of this first open call is to support 20 African local entrepreneurs coming from Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania to improve their innovation creation capacities, to increase the investment opportunities for them and to facilitate the development of EU-African joint innovation project and ventures.

Hubiquitous is a co-funded project from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101016895. Hubiquitous will display relevant service implementations through a 6-month Accelerator Program.

DISCOVER THE CHALLENGES

• Agrifood: Agriculture is a driver of growth for any economy. Digitalisation can enhance processes in these sectors involving material flow, information flow or financial capital flow, managed via the supply chain management.
• Smart Cities: Digitalisation has enormous potential to modernize the government and public sector, e.g. by protecting sensitive citizen and government data, increasing trust in government systems or by developing smart city applications.
• Health: Digital solutions are necessary to improve primary care assistance, to prevent diseases and disabilities, to cover the specific needs of vulnerable communities, to make the national healthcare systems more efficient and resilient and to improve the patient experience.
• Industry 4.0: Different smart technologies are helping to speed up the digital transformation of manufacturing and enable a decisive move towards industry 4.0. The smart factories of the future will organise themselves and enable production that is collaborative, customer-specific and individualised.
• Green Economy: To reach climate goals, the digital sector has to contribute its share and embrace sustainability in all its facets: circular economy models for hardware, climate-neutral CPUs and server centres, software advancements to reduce energy consumption, and many more.

Benefits of Hubiquitous: Africa-Europe Accelerator Program

• Application Business Box: A “ready-to-use” technical and business support package to entrepreneurs and startups, consisting of 3 essential elements:
  • Prototyping kits & software templates,
  • Training courses (both technical and business-oriented contents), and
  • Business support templates.
• Solution Lab facilities: The Solution Lab provides startups with the capacity to develop, test, experiment and pilot innovative products, using IoT, AI and Big Data technologies. Furthermore, the selected projects will have access tothe “Prototyping and Learning Centre”, a platform allowing the startupers to quickly design and create a prototype, while learning on the way.
• Help desk and Mentoring:Theparticipants will have access to a permanent service (from Monday to Friday) to receive assistance and information. Furthermore, they will have the chance to connect with a network of Mentors, and receive support from them on specific issues upon request.
• Access to the learning area: Selected participants will have access to the training materials, courses, webinars, bootcamps and hackathons covering, among others:
  • Fundamentals of IoT,
  • Introduction to Basic Electronics,
  • Development Boards and Sensors,
  • Getting started with Waziup technologies, and
  • IoT Cloud platform.
• The MeetHub platform: A platform for IoT stakeholders to collaborate in Europe and Africa. It encourages networking and learning between professionals, enthusiasts, individuals and businesses. The platform allows to search for DIHs, startups and developers in IoT, and to promote innovative IoT solutions.
• Growth and investment readiness: The Program foresees 2 interactive online workshops on  Investor Readiness, covering topics like:
  • Planning for Fundraising,
  • Preparing Fundraising Materials,
  • The Fundraising Process,
  • The Human Element,
  • What to Look for in an Investor, and
  • Startup Valuation.
• Awards
  • Overall winner of the 1st Accelerator Program : 1.000 €
  • Winner in Nigeria: 1.000 €
  • Winner in Egypt: 1.000 €
  • Winner in Tanzania: 1.000 €
  • Winner in Ghana: 1.000 €

Eligible Countries: Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania.

Eligibility Criteria of Hubiquitous: Africa-Europe Accelerator Program

• Entrepreneurs: a person or group of people who sets up a business or businesses.
• Startup/scaleups: Startups/scaleups are companies in the first stages of operations.
• SMEs: SMEs are legal entities as defined by the EC as Small and Medium Enterprises.
• They specially encourage application from women and young talents, as well as African-European partnerships.
• Applicants from EU27 countries may submit applications jointly with an African parter if:
  • The lead applicant is the African partner.
  • The IoT solutions will be physically deployed in Africa (prototyping and testing activities).

Deadline for Hubiquitous Africa-Europe Accelerator Program: 30th June, 2022