1.0 BACKGROUND

Ghana Tech Lab is an open collaborative tech space for competent digital skills training, seeding innovations and growing startups. Ghana Tech Lab is a joint venture between Innohub Ghana and Kumasi Hive under the E-Transform Project of the Ministry of Communications and funded by the World Bank.

Our programs focus on providing a fertile farm for innovative promising Startups in Africa, early stage investments for promising Startups in Africa and the provision of competent digital training that impels the creation of highly skilled digital workforce / Human capital.

1.1 About the Pathways to Sustainable Employment (PaSE) Project

Pathways to Sustainable Employment (PaSE) as intervention by Ghana Tech Lab seeks to locally facilitate a model that leverages a distributed network of hubs across Ghana to deliver integrated entrepreneurship support (skills building, seed funding, incubation, acceleration), with a view to building a pipeline of investment ready firms (more than 70% women-led firms), and linking young people to employment opportunities.

2.0 About the Acceleration Program

Our high-quality Acceleration program addresses the demand for quality Business support (with a priority on female-led businesses) towards the provision of high-quality Business Development Services (BDS) to existing businesses.

The Acceleration program seeks to achieve the following:

• Identify industries most relevant within the specific communities. Targeted training and resources for supporting tools will then be provided to cater their business development services to SMEs within these sectors.
• set for hubs to nurture selected businesses through a series of tailored, localized trainings, mentorship, professional advisory services and executable growth tasks.

High-growth SMEs identified by partner hubs will be assessed and prepared through our acceleration program.

The program’s cohort will be crowned with a Startup pitch and investment forum dubbed the Ghana Startup Summit (GSS), where all the accelerated businesses get to pitch to a panel of Investors (both Angel Investors and Venture Capital Investors) to help secure growth funding.

The program is targeted at tech-driven and tech-enabled startups across the country. Selected startups will receive tailored support through an initial Needs Assessment to be performed at the beginning of the program to identify gaps within each selected startup’s business model.

1.4 Benefits of Program

Our acceleration program is designed to help scale your startups and assist you achieve measurable outcomes.

3.0 Selection Criteria

To help you determine if your startup falls under the GTL Accelerator core focus area, kindly assess the current standing of your startup against the following criteria

1. Number of years in operation
   • Your startup must be operational between 6 months to 3 years
2. Registration status of startup
   • To be eligible for selection, your startup must be registered with the Registrar General’s Department.
3. The startup must have a tech enabled product
   • The acceleration program is designed to support startups tackling a challenge using technology. Your product must hence be either tech-driven or tech-enabled.
4. Team capacity

   Your startup must have at least a business lead and a tech lead. Beyond this, the following will also be assessed during the application process:

   • Team size
   • Strength of business lead
   • Strength of technical lead
5. Already have a working MVP
   • You must prove that you already have a working MVP on the market that can be further refined or improved through the acceleration program.
6. Startup has the ability to scale (based on business model)
   • Startup’s growth or expansion plans will be assessed through the application and selection process
7. The startup must have built some level of traction (active/engaged clients or made verifiable sales)
   • Your startup must have already made some revenue and looking forward to raising extra funding (seed or Serie A) for their business

4.0 Application Guidelines