In 2021, a Harvard Business School case study lauded the Harambeans Alliance for its pivotal role in shaping Africa’s venture ecosystem. With fewer than 400 members, the Alliance had already produced three unicorns, Andela, Flutterwave, and Go1 and collectively raised over $2 billion in venture capital.
Yet amid the praise came a sobering truth. “Africa’s challenges are vast,” Jonathan Oppenheimer remarked at the Harambeans Vatican Forum. “We don’t just need three, five, or seven Harambeans. We need thousands.”
With just 30 spots awarded from over 5,000 applicants each year, the Alliance is on track to reach only about a thousand members by 2050. Confronted with this reality, the Alliance asked: How do we scale impact without losing intimacy? How do we support the broader ecosystem beyond our members?
To broaden access while preserving its close-knit spirit, the Alliance launched an ambitious new initiative: Harambeans Lab.
Democratizing Entrepreneurial Insight
Developed in partnership with Schmidt Futures, Cisco, and Allan & Gill Gray Philanthropy, the Harambeans Lab is an online platform designed to democratize access to entrepreneurial knowledge across Africa.
Its mission is simple yet bold: to turn the hindsight of Harambeans into the foresight of the next generation of African entrepreneurs.
Today, the Lab features over 202 short-form video interviews with 103 of Africa’s leading entrepreneurs, representing countries from Egypt to Ethiopia, Nigeria to Namibia, and Kenya to Côte d’Ivoire.
Covering topics from fundraising and team-building to balancing entrepreneurship with self-care, these lessons are grounded in lived experience, not theory. The Lab offers an actionable curriculum designed to help founders start and scale high-growth ventures across the continent.
The Harambeans Lab Prize: A Bridge to the Summit
But the Harambeans Lab is more than a digital library. It is a gateway.
Each year, the Harambeans Lab Prize offers a select group of rising African entrepreneurs something truly priceless: an all-expenses-paid invitation to attend the Harambeans Global Summit, one of Africa’s most exclusive gatherings of innovators and investors.
Traditionally, the Summit is an invite-only event reserved for Harambeans and Guilds, market-creating innovators who have pledged “to work together as one” to build Africa’s future. Without the Lab Prize, many of these emerging founders would never have had the opportunity to attend.
Expanding the Circle of Opportunity
Through the Lab Prize, talented entrepreneurs from partner communities, including Allan & Gill Gray Philanthropies, Jasiri, Africa Leadership Academy, and FNB Namibia, can earn a coveted seat at the Summit.
Participants qualify by completing any of the curated courses on the Harambeans Lab platform by a set deadline. In return, they gain access to world-class resources, transformative networking opportunities, and priceless mentorship from Africa’s leading innovators and investors.
For many Lab Fellows, it’s their first time in a room that has birthed unicorns like Andela, Flutterwave, Yoco, and Go1. It’s often a catalytic moment that shapes not just their ventures, but their vision for what is possible.
Planting Seeds for Africa’s Future
At its core, the Harambeans Lab embodies the Alliance’s founding spirit: to share, to teach, and to grow together. By turning hard-won lessons into accessible, real-world guidance and by opening doors to the Summit for the continent’s most promising emerging founders, the Lab is helping to build Africa’s next generation of market-creating innovators.
It is a commitment to ensure that while the Alliance remains intentionally intimate, its insights and its impact, scale far beyond its own walls.