“Do you know the prosperity paradox? It holds that long-term prosperity is not achieved by reducing poverty, but by financing and supporting innovation“.
Every year Andrea Censoni goes to Africa, launches an acceleration program for startups, collects applications, selects the most suitable founders, trains them with a mentorship path and rewards the 5 most promising onestaking them to Italy for a contamination trip. Then they return to their country and innovate. Thus, a new generation of founders is growing who will change the world, starting from Africa. He does it out of passion, but he’s not alone. With him there are dozens and dozens of volunteers.
Andrea is 33 years old, with three great passions that in some way intersect and have always been fueled: Venture capital, startup acceleration and Africa. “I have always had the passion to do something useful for the African continent. And after the first trips I understood that I could have an impact simply by making my skills available.”
He founded BeEntrepreneurs, a non-profit association that supports startups in disadvantaged socio-economic contexts. “Whoever decides to start an innovative business in Africa is not just a founder or a CEO. First of all he is a hero.”
Rewind. Censoni graduated in business economics and international management, between Bologna and Modena, with a thesis on startup competitions. After finishing his studies, he immediately entered the world of venture capital. He spent five years, from 2016 to 2021 in Dpixel, a venture incubator founded by Gianluca Dettori which today has more than 10 years of experience in supporting the most innovative teams. Learn everything. In 2021 he joined the Enea Tech Foundation which was supposed to manage the first Italian fund dedicated to technology transfer. For some reason, the bottom doesn’t start. Censoni is looking for new projects. Since 2022 he has been in Cariplo Factory, a company that brought the acceleration program of the University of Berkeley to Italy: it is called Skydeck Europe, it attracts international startups from all over the world to Milan. However, in the midst of this professional journey there is an experience that changes his life. It’s August 2017: instead of spending his holidays at the seaside, he decides to do a month of volunteering in Uganda, East Africa. He wants to understand more about the innovation ecosystem.
“Africa has always been depicted with a narrative full of negative elements: hunger, poverty, epidemics, wars, immigration. I had family friends who told me about their experiences in the missions from an early age. Those who had been there told me: “There’s more”. I was intrigued and wanted to go and see how startups and innovation were done in a difficult context and 5 thousand km from home.” As Censoni va a Kampala with the friend Lorenzo D’Amelio. “The discovery is surprising: I found startups, talent – because talent has no geography -, aself-entrepreneurship more developed than the tendency to find a job. But the real shock is cultural. A very young population lives here, average age 16 compared to 45 in Italy. You feel energy, a desire to do. There is confidence in the future. Here I immediately understood that what was missing from Africa was the story of hope…”.
Having returned from this experience, Andrea begins to reflect. And after one trip he takes another: Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania. Everywhere he finds hope in the future, young people with the desire to create opportunities for themselves. He puts together what he has learned with what he sees. He studies, compares the data and little by little the idea takes strength in him.
“Let’s start with the numbers. In Africa there are few investments in startups. In the 54 countries that make up the continent, in 2021, capital was raised for a total of 5.2 billion dollars. In 2023, it will be 2.5 billion. For have an idea: 100 billion dollars were raised in Europe in 2021. Yet – Dettori always tells me – after space, Africa is the last unexplored frontier of venture capital. In addition to the young population, the tendency to create startups to solve problems (and there are many of them in Africa), there is more. There is a middle class that is gaining purchasing power: we are talking about 40% of the total population which, in 2030, should reach 1.8 billion people. And there is a widespread presence of tech hubs: incubators, accelerators, coworking spaces for those who want to start a business. From these data and from reading Clayton M. Christensen’s book on “The Prosperity Paradox”, our Startup Africa Roadtrip program was born and hence the Beentrepreneurs association. We created an annual non-profit accelerator program for early stage startups in East Africa. We teach them to make pitches, to present themselves to investors, to move with limited resources. To understand how the life cycle of a startup works. Everything we do is voluntary and free. Nobody gets paid. We have decided to invest and use our time and skills to help these entrepreneurs grow. We are thinking about how to help them financially.”
The results? To date, Censoni with Lorenzo D’Amelio and other partners (there are 18 in total, including 8 the founders) and 54 volunteers have reached incredible numbers. They launched 5 acceleration programs involving 4 African countries: Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania. There are two roadshows in Italy (the next one is scheduled for June 2024). More than 1000 applications from African startups. 100 selected and accelerated ones. 400 entrepreneurs were trained, of which 200 were female entrepreneurs. To support themselves, they collect donations from Italian corporates and private individuals.
What type of innovation is that of African startups? “It’s not what we’re used to. It’s not “deep” or frontier but it is often the use of simple or digital technologies to solve community problems or to ‘rebuild’ supply chains that don’t work. There are sectors that are completely ‘broken’, inefficient, with too many intermediaries”. The 5 startups that will come to Italy deal with energy, circular economy, mental health, training and green tech.
In the last year the Association has also launched Seeds for Sustainable Energy, an open innovation program that brings East African startups to collaborate with large companies such as Eni.
“Why do I do it? I’ve often thought about it. Every time I go home I feel a totally different energy from what I feel in Italy. It’s something I need to rebalance my priorities. It’s as if I put my scale of values back in order and understand exactly what is important and what is not. Observing and accompanying, even if for a short while, these kids who have the desire to do, energy and courage, I understand how privileged we are. We won the lottery by being born on the right side of the planet. We don’t know what it means to come into the world in a village where there is no water, electricity or hospitals. We have so many resources, but we don’t realize it. Their lesson, however, is different: they teach us to dream. They do it in terribly difficult contexts. They believe in the future. The comparison with them gives me hope for a better future also for the young people and future generations of our country, especially now that I am about to become a father. We can change our way of life, stop feeling sorry for ourselves. We have a moral duty to do something useful for others. We must encourage and cultivate the same passion for doing business here too. Africa is the continent of the present, not the future. An opportunity, not a problem”