The African Business Angels Network (ABAN), a pan-African initiative to promote angel investing and boost early stage startups, has announced a partnership with the Lagos Angels Network (LAN) to hold the first of a series of Angel Investor Bootcamps on July 31 during the Lagos Startup Week.
Disrupt Africa reported last year on the launch of ABAN, which formed after a group of organisations, including the likes of LAN, VC4Africa, Cameroon Angels Network (CAN), Silicon Cape, Ghana Angel Investors Network (GAIN) and European Business Angels Network (EBAN), joined forces to promote a culture of angel investing across Africa.
Lagos Startup Week takes place at the end of this month, and will feature an Angel Investor Bootcamp taking place under the theme “Unlocking capital for early stage innovation”. The lessons learned from the bootcamp will feed into the programme for the second annual Angel Investor Summit, which will take place in September as part of DEMO Africa.
The programme will consist of a master-class conducted by EBAN president Candace Johnson, as well as expert sessions and in-depth case studies. The expert sessions will bring together investors from LAN as well as other seasoned investors, while participating investors will also have an opportunity to join the pitch sessions of the Seedstars World event happening at the same time.
“The intended audience is new aspiring investors who want to learn about early stage investing, as well as seasoned, experienced investors looking to engage with peers,” ABAN said.
ABAN president Tomi Davies told Disrupt Africa last month such networks played a huge role in supporting early-stage entrepreneurs, and not just with funding.
“In the interest to connect these African networks, support new investors and new networks, to maximise their impact and to connect African investors to their global counterparts, there is a need to establish a pan-African association of angel investor networks and other early stage investors,” he said.
“So ABAN is focused on supporting networks like LAN with angel capacity development, shared best practices and standards, access to international resources, engagement and lobbying of policymakers.”
