The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is ushering in a new era of African innovation with the launch of the Timbuktoo Fintech Hub in Lagos, Nigeria. This groundbreaking initiative unveiled a pioneer cohort of 42 startups from 31 countries, marking the first step in UNDP’s $1 billion effort to support Africa’s technology startups and transform the continent’s technological landscape.
The Lagos hub is the first in a series of technology centres planned for 13 African countries, including Kigali, Cairo, Cape Town, Accra, Casablanca, Dakar, and Nairobi. The launch of the Timbuktoo Fintech Hub in Lagos, which is one of 10 thematic hubs under the Timbuktoo initiative, brought together high-ranking officials from various sectors of the economy, including government representatives, industry leaders, investors, academics, and regulatory bodies.
Timbuktoo aims to go beyond borders, promoting a borderless Africa where goods and services, particularly innovation, can flow freely.
At this event, Adesewa Olofinko, an African Union Media Fellow, caught up with Ahunna Eziakonwa, UN Assistant-Secretary General and Director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa, to discuss the impact and goals of the Timbuktoo initiative.
Adesewa: Can you tell us about the vision that birthed Timbuktoo?
Ahunna Eziakonwa: Thank you so much. At the UNDP, we recognize that African youths are innovative, and we have been seeing the emergence of “unicorns” and a lot of activities around innovation. We believe that innovation is the fastest way to achieve our development goals. However, we also identified a key bottleneck: the lack of early-stage startup funding. We then discovered that despite a lot of talent and ingenuity in Africa’s youth, everyone avoided those in the early stages. They want to invest in solutions that have already been made and market-tested. UNDP thought that unless we can create opportunities for finances and investment to flow into this early-stage risk capital, we will not be able to get the volume and the transformation that we need. So that’s the number one solution that Timbuktoo brings to the table—how to bring capital.
The second problem we set out to solve in Timbuktoo is that traditionally, investment in African startups has been concentrated in a few sectors, like fintech, agri-tech, and health tech. But more than this, we recognize that there are diverse needs in Africa’s development landscape, from agri-tech and edu-tech to the creative industries. So we are expanding beyond the usual suspects. We are looking to nurture innovation in ten thematic areas to ensure that we address the diverse needs of Africa’s development landscape.
The third problem we want to solve is the disconnect between industry and academia. They always say “There will be no Silicon Valley without Stanford University”. We found out that our universities are largely left out of this ecosystem, so with Timbuktoo, we are establishing what we call “University Innovation Pods and Centres” (UNIPODS), which will allow our students at the universities to hatch their ideas and be able to connect them to industrial demands.
Adesewa: Your number one aim is to bring capital, how does Timbuktoo aim to attract both commercial and catalytic capital to support early-stage innovators?
At Timbuktoo, we are bringing capital to the table by combining commercial and catalytic funding because Africa is perceived to be high-risk by many investors. So with the catalytic fund, which will mostly be mobilized by the Timbuktoo Foundation, we will be able to de-risk the environment and create more confidence for commercial investments to help us scale.
Adesewa: How is Timbuktoo looking to address the issue of collaboration across Africa?
We wanted to bring the Pan-African DNA to our innovation journey because we know that in Africa, there’s a bit of fragmentation in terms of our borders, and it’s difficult for innovators to see a bigger market and expand their world. However, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is trying to remove these barriers. So Timbuktoo is promoting a borderless Africa regarding goods and services, particularly in this area of innovation. There are lots of these young people who are innovating for the world beyond their countries and communities.
Adesewa: Tell us more about the University Innovation Pods (UNIPODS).
The UNIPODs will be to African communities what Stanford University is to Silicon Valley. What we are doing is, we are finding these youths where they are and getting them ready to lead the fourth industrial revolution. These UNIPODS will be established in every single country on the continent. We already have 13 running, and by the end of the year, we plan to have 17. Eventually, we aim to have one in every country in Africa. In Nigeria, there will be seven due to its large population.
Adesewa: Timbuktoo is a very audacious project, is it mainly Pan-African funded, or does it have investments from partners outside the continent?
Oh, we are hoping to get global investment, but one of the key innovations of Timbuktoo is to harness African capital. Traditionally, African capital hasn’t flowed as readily towards startups. Timbuktoo aims to change that. We hope that with the kind of potential that we can demonstrate in each hub, we can attract more African capital. For us, it is important that we retain the value in Africa, because if everything is coming from outside, then it can be more easily extracted.
Africa has the world’s largest youth population, which, to us at the UNDP, is a powerhouse of potential. With the Timbuktoo Initiative, we’re not just taking a major step, we’re empowering this generation to turn their ideas into solutions that change the world. Timbuktoo is on a journey to position Africa as a global hub for innovation, where the future is shaped by young minds.