The Land Accelerator Africa was the original of what is now three Land Accelerators operating around the world, all operated by World Resources Institute (a.k.a. WRI), all focused on restorative agriculture.
Given the pandemic this session is different than others. Historically we’ve invited 10-15 companies to participate. For this session we’ve invited the top 100 applicants. 100 out of a record 1,387 total applications. 100 companies based in 35 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa.
These 100 companies met on Zoom this week and will meet weekly for the next 11 weeks. All 100 are eligible for a $5,000 grant. 10-15 of these will then be invited to a deeper engagement and additional funding.
Most of the companies who applied are young and small, as is normal for an accelerator. If we had followed the normal pattern of picking just a few of these, likely only one of the companies under $10,000/yr would be invited to join in. As most are at that scale today, hopefully 12 weeks of guidance and a small grant will help many of them jump in size by the end of this year.
Finally, this is The Land Accelerator and its focus is on furthering land restoration. What does that mean in practice? Mostly a mix of sustainable agriculture and tree-based foods, with a few innovations around direct restoration, mitigating deforestation, and products like bamboo which replace trees with a faster-growing renewable, non-timber resource.
More details at theLandAccelerator.com
