The co-founder of the Pora app and Azaria Lagos e-commerce app, Buki Osunkeye, has said that the federal government would need the help of experts in the startup industry to disburse the proposed N10 billion annual startup funds to achieve transparency.
Osunkeye made the call during the Nairametrics webinar with the theme: “Nigeria Startup Act and Tech Investment: Exploring Possibilities” held on Saturday.
According to her, industry experts in charge of accelerator and incubator programs are in the best position to administer such funds to get the best results.
She noted that the government had transparently started the process by including the existence of the fund in the Nigeria Startup Act.
She, however, observed that the disbursement could only be transparent if managed by incubators, who would channel the funds to deserving startups through a transparent process.
The government needs partners.
While noting that the government is always busy with many things and may not be able to give the disbursement the attention it requires, Osunkeye said:
- “We recognize that the government is busy looking after the country. They have so many other things in their hands. But then we recognize that there are experts in each state. There are incubators, there are accelerator programs, and there are investor readiness programs.
- “Then I would say sign them up as your franchise to be the allocators of that fund because they are the ones that are closest to the startups. They know the day-to-day challenges of running a business. They know all the nitty-gritty of the administrative stuff that you need for your startup to succeed, and they know how to put together policies and programs that you have to go through from ideation to market-ready product, and even raising funds.
- “So, I would honestly encourage that the next step here is that once the funds have been allocated, disbursed through the partners that we recognize.”
Determining the criteria
Osunkeye said those who would be allocating the fund would also need to come up with a set of criteria that would be clear to everybody to ensure transparency.
According to her, many people would want to come out to claim they are a startup once the fund is made available, hence the need for a clear set of criteria as to who could get the fund.
- “Let’s be honest, once the fund is made available, so many people out there will come out and say I’m a startup. But it’s not everybody that wakes up and says that they are a tech startup, that is a real startup.
- So, certain criteria need to be put in place only through the partners. I mean, I’m not going to mention names, we all know where the incubators and accelerators are.
- So, if you have a fund, pass it through those guys, let them be the ones to do the training, the mentoring, the pitching the pitch process, let it go through a very transparent pitch process that we all know what the criteria are,” she said.
Through the implementation of the Nigeria Startup Act, the Federal government had recently announced that it would spend N10 billion annually to encourage young innovators in the country to come up with innovative indigenous startups to significantly reduce importation and encourage the exportation of Nigerian products.
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