For ten years, Open Startup helped more than 1,000 startups prepare for investment and growth. The organisation worked with founders in over 20 African countries. It built a community of more than 500 mentors and trained over 300 startup coaches.
Now Open Startup is changing its focus. The pan-African organisation announced a new strategy called The Science Road during its tenth anniversary. The new direction moves beyond fintech and consumer apps toward science, deep technology, and research-led ventures.
What The Science Road Actually Does
The Science Road brings all of Open Startup’s existing programs under one unified platform. This platform connects founders, scientists, universities, investors, corporations, and policymakers. The goal is to help research-led ventures move from scientific discovery to commercially viable businesses.
Open Startup will focus on startups developing research-driven solutions in healthcare, climate technology, artificial intelligence, and other science-based sectors.
The strategy operates through two core pathways. The first pathway targets pre-seed innovators who are translating scientific research and breakthrough discoveries into investable businesses. The second pathway supports seed-stage companies that already have technologies capable of addressing major market and societal challenges.
Why Africa Needs This Shift Now
Science and deep technology ventures face different challenges than software startups. They need longer development timelines, higher research costs, and greater technical expertise. Many struggle to attract early funding before they can demonstrate commercial success.
This creates what experts describe as one of the largest financing gaps in Africa’s innovation ecosystem.
Houda Ghozzi, founder and CEO of Open Startup, said Africa now has roughly 300 to 500 deep-tech startups across the continent. She identified South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Tunisia, and Morocco as the leading deep-tech markets.
But many existing startup programs do not adequately support scientists in commercialising research. Key gaps include awareness among scientists, team-building support, governance guidance, and specialised commercialisation pathways.
Openers First: The New Investment Arm
The Science Road introduces Openers First, a new investment arm that provides early-stage funding to selected ventures emerging from the platform.
Openers First aims to raise $3 million to support startups in health, climate, artificial intelligence, blue tech, agtech, energy, and insurance. The investment vehicle will provide local currency SAFE notes between $20,000 and $50,000.
The investment arm complements Open Startup’s investment-readiness work by providing funding during the critical transition from pre-seed to seed-stage growth.
Partnerships Across Africa
Open Startup plans to strengthen collaboration between research institutions, universities, and innovation hubs across Africa. The organisation will deepen partnerships spanning from Tunisia to South Africa.
Key partners include CERI, Stellenbosch University, and LaunchLab. These collaborations help research-led founders move science out of laboratories and closer to markets, investment, and real-world adoption.
Open Startup’s work over the past decade has been supported by partners including KfW AfricaGrow, AfricInvest, the United States Department of State, the European Union, Digital Africa, Bpifrance, Columbia University, and MIT.
A Decade of Building Trust
Founded in Tunisia in 2016, Open Startup started as a university entrepreneurship competition. It has since evolved into a pan-African investment-readiness and ecosystem-building platform.
Over the past decade, the organisation has supported more than 3,000 founders and over 1,000 startups. It has connected founders with investors, corporations, universities, policymakers, and international partners across Africa and globally.
What This Means for African Innovation
The move toward deep tech reflects a broader shift across African technology ecosystems. Attention is increasingly turning toward sectors capable of delivering long-term industrial and economic impact beyond traditional startup models.
Ghozzi said the solutions sitting in labs and research centres could completely transform the way people access health and other services, if they had early funding.
“Africa has always been using and spending money on technologies that are coming from the Western world,” she said.
The Science Road aims to change that narrative. Open Startup wants to demonstrate that deep-tech companies can hire scientists with decent salaries, keeping talent in Africa.
Portfolio company Reme-D, based in Egypt, produces diagnostic tools for human and animal diseases. The company joined Open Startup with around 10 employees and has grown to employ 47 scientists, over half of whom are women.
The Path Forward
Open Startup will begin implementing The Science Road through its acceleration programs and the newly established Openers First investment arm. The organisation aims to close the funding gap that has kept many African scientific discoveries from reaching commercial markets.
Ghozzi captured the organisation’s ambition: “We believe The Science Road can become a runway connecting Africa’s innovators to the world, unlocking new opportunities for collaboration, investment, and scientific advancement”.
The next decade could be transformative for Africa’s ability to produce globally competitive science-based ventures. With the right support, research-led startups can solve complex problems at scale and create lasting economic and societal impact.
