After doing rounds in Africa Seedstars finally held it’s Global Regional Summit in Maputo Mozambique on Thursday (14 December). in 2018 Seedstars is planning to deepen the roots into the African Soil by expanding its co-working hubs. Although Seedstars will continue with the pitching competition — which Makadristo described as the gatekeeper of everything that happens at Seedstars — the organisation plans to next year shift its focus to doing more investment deals and adding more Seedspaces.
Seedstars currently has six active running spaces in Africa: Lagos, Abidjan, Cape Town, Durban, Nairobi and Addis Ababa, while two other spaces in Cairo and Casablanca are said to be “in the making”, with Johannesburg and Dar es Salaam being the top priority in the next expansion hit as hinted by Makadristo.
“Up until now in many countries, we only come in once a year and then we are out,” she said. “I think in some countries where we have alumni we have this solid network of people who actually want to do stuff. The interesting part would be to see how can we have a long-term presence than just coming in and going out,” she added.
The idea, she said, is for have a Seedspace in every country. While some of the spaces are owned by Seedstars, the platform also partners with already existing spaces.
“We want to give them (alumni) a space where they can come together, where they know if I want to go to Lagos tomorrow, I don’t only have a space, I have a community, a network that I know, that they are familiar with, that they want to work with and get to know,” she added.
