LoftyInc & ALF Signs Strategic Partnership Agreement to Spur Innovation

On Friday, LoftyInc's Managing Partner, Oluwole Odetayo and Africa's premier think-tank the Africa Leadership Forum, Executive Director - Ayodele Aderinwale, MFR - inked a strategic partnership agreement at ALF's sprawling Ota's campus that calls for establishment of a permanent high impact business incubation platform. The strategic initiative is to be known as the Innovation Incubation Initiative, also to be known as I-3. The challenge which the partnership agreement seeks to tackle is that of spurring the next wave of innovation from the emerging economies of Sub-Sahara Africa.

ALF was founded in 1988 by Ex-Nigeria President, General Olusegun Obasanjo in response to  ALF was founded in 1988 by Ex-Nigeria President, General Olusegun Obasanjo in response to a number of very pressing challenges facing post-independence Africa. Today, it is led by indefatigable new generation of Africans, and has on its board (of Conveners and Exco) prominent African leaders like Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and former South Africa & Mozambique first lady, Graca Machel-Mandela. ALF operates from a sprawling campus in Ota Nigeria, and also runs one of three Central Bank of Nigeria's entrepreneurship development center in Lagos, Nigeria.

The I-3 program objective as stated in the agreement, is to: 

1. Identify and develop high impact business founders and innovators in a business incubation system known as “Ideas Lab”
2. Develop a pool of investible equity fund to support ideas emerging from the IDEAS LAB to be known as The Entrepreneurship Development and Growth Equity Fund, “The EDGE Fund”

ALF and LoftyInc will be joining forces to provide resources to the physical facility that is expected to train up to twenty-five entrepreneurs within each funding window starting from first quarter next year (each funding window is to run from 9-24 months) . ALF and LoftyInc will also serve as co-managers of the EDGE Fund which is expected to take equity stake in incubated businesses, and generate above market rate return to private sector and developmental partner investors. 

LoftyInc's Managing Partner, Wole Odetayo (Left) & ALF's Exec Director Ayo Aderinwale (Center) & LoftyInc's Ayokunle Akinrotimi (Right) after the Strategic Partnership Agreement Signing Ceremony held at ALF's Ota, Nigeria Headquarter on Friday

Incubated businesses in the Media Entertainment Technology (MET), Energy & Environmental Systems (EES), Consumer Products (CP) and Life sciences and Wellbeing (LSW) Sectors are expected to be funded with a combination of equity, loan and convertible loans through instruments structured by I-3. Mentors to assist in managing the IdeasLab and shepherding the incubation process will be trained in the Monterey Institute of International Studies, California and will be in Nigeria as soon as the program is launched. 

An ultra-modern incubation facility to house our innovators is under construction in Ota, and shall be complete in the fourth quarter. The recruitment and identification of potential innovators for the first funding window has since begun. Contact us at ideaslab@loftyincltd.biz for more information or to forward your business plans/profiles for consideration. 

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LoftyInc Allied Partners Limited is a Start-Up Funding & Incubation Firm based in Lagos Nigeria. With a Global Team of Professionals aiding the innovation and entrepreneurship process, LoftyInc specializes in start-up incubation, capital formation and fundin. Also, LoftyInc offers project and management advisory services as well as capital & real sector research for multinationals, investors and institutions in the frontier market where they operate.

Building an Innovation Eco-System..where it was Absent

As LoftyInc sits at the precipice of signing another significant agreement with a truly crucial partner, and beginning the wholesome process of initiating a true innovation and entrepreneurship eco-system in West Africa, an article recommended by my mentor, Marsha Wulff of Wulff Capital/Afroceuticals, provides guidance as we chart a course truly untraveled before in the region we have chosen to stake our claim: West Africa. 

"How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution" was published in Harvard Business School's HBR (Harvard Business Review). In Marsha's own words, here are the lessons (for us, our partners and our benefactors):

" It basically says: 

- It is a mistake to do too much that makes launching ventures easy, 

- It's best  to permit region-specific flexibility, 

- Engage private sector diaspora for advice/networks/expertise, 

- Inspire entrepreneurs with success stories, 

- Change public opinion with media releases, 

- Prioritize resources for ventures with rapid global potential, 

- Don't rely on formal business incubators to grow businesses, 

- The best policies and laws back off from encumbering enterprises, 

- If at first you don't succeed, try again, soon!"

The first agreement we executed back in May, 2010 with Project Diaspora USA creating alongside with Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS), California's Graduate School of International Policy and Management and  the Biz Spring Program provides a networking platform that is particularly crucial to attract external resources to business of innovation incubation. For us at LoftyInc, it also provides us critical linkages to other regions on the sub-continent and allows us to share best practices. 

BizSpring (moniker, Adwuma Mbomu - in West Africa), allows us to bring innovators, innovation centers (universities, research centers and think tanks), funders (Venture Capital, Banks & Devt. Orgs) as well as government together to explore creating the necessary ecosystem that will enable entrepreneurs and innovative ventures flourish. Specifically, it will also supply the much needed capacity building resources from the ground zero of innovation itself: Silicon Valley. To us, it is about as much about doing good as it is about a strategic business objective. It will be nearly impossible to create the pipeline of venture capital deals we envisage our organization executing in a decade if we do not invest in creating this eco-system. 

Since Program Inception in May, we've succeeded in linking up with a number of institutions and private sector interests; the roll of which will be provided soon as we formally launch the program sometimes this Fall. 

To avoid the pitfalls enunciated in the article referenced above, it is about as necessary to harness local resources as well as localized institutional muscle to achieve this objective (Creating an Innovative Entrepreneurship EcoSystem). This goal is addressed by our soon to be announced partnership with a major Pan-African think-tank...actually, the pioneer of them all. We hope that this critical partnership will lay the foundations for not only building capacity as the first does, but to move pin pointedly towards creating the funding mechanisms for the would-be entrepreneurs that will be seeded within the creative new incubation bios that LoftyInc's team have designed to be the first (and the best) of its kind in the region. This bios will be known as the IDEAS LAB. An Equity Fund to back this laboratory of Ideas up is also in the works. 

Stay Tuned...

LoftyInc specializes in venture incubation & early stage funding of businesses in the ECOWAS sub-region. It was founded in August 2008 specifically to pursue early stage business development for emerging enterprises.