Askya Investment Partners is opening applications for a six-week programme for African AI startups, with a minimum commitment of $200,000 to at least one participant. Ten companies will take part, and none of them has to pay cash or give up equity to participate.
Founded in 2024 by Babacar Seck, the firm’s pitch rests heavily on his track record, as Seck spent years at AXA as an advisor to the chairman and chief executive before becoming a founding member of Proparco’s $300 million venture capital programme and later chief executive of Digital Africa.
Across those roles, he backed nearly 20 startups, including Moniepoint, Jumia, GoMyCode and Complete Farmer, and was the first generation of institutional venture capital fund managers on the continent. By the firm’s account, those investments returned more than $120 million in profits to investors, including one New York Stock Exchange listing. He has also chaired a Smart Africa AI council investment working group, developing a continental AI investment strategy.
Seck is deliberate about how he describes the programme. It is not an accelerator, he says, because accelerators are built around fundraising. They teach founders to pitch, polish their deck, and end with a demo day that is effectively a pitching day, treating the fundraise as the outcome.
