About Us

A $10million project aimed at capitalizing on the ubiquity of SMEs and the innovative potential of Tanzania’s young population (over 60% are under 25 and 19% between 15 - 24 years). The project has two components:

1. The gender principal Daraja Impact Fund ($8million), an impact fund that invests catalytic capital to social enterprises using Impact Linked Finance instruments and technical assistance support to High Impact Organizations in Tanzania. The sector agnostic catalytic fund operates from 2023 – 2027 and is managed by impact advisors SEAF and AlphaMundi Foundation. 

2. The second component is supporting a conducive environment of Tanzania for impact enterprises in order to foster coordination and complementarity of the different stakeholders’ initiatives. By supporting the development of acts and policies like the Startup Policy, stakeholder coordination towards an inclusive, gender sensitive, holistic and systematic support to impact enterprises. For more information, please click here

The ILFF provides catalytic and flexible finance to HIOs in their acceleration and growth stage who are focused on creating a strong positive impact including for vulnerable communities, and directly rewards these HIOs for positive outcomes generated through their business activities. Managed by facility managers, the ILFF channels financial resources to HIOs through non-repayable and repayable financial instruments that link financial terms to realized outcomes, ensuring that funding flows are directly tied to measurable and sustained impact.

These instruments include Social Impact Incentives (see also SIINC), impact-linked loans, impact-linked payments, impact-linked (repayable) grants, and other financial innovations with rewards linked to achieving positive outcomes. Within ILFF, there are several funding windows, including a regional one for Eastern and Southern Africa ("ILF ESA I" 2020-2025) and a specific one for Tanzania ("ILF ESA II" 2023-2027), The latter provides catalytic funding with an expanded focus on climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience, i.e. rewarding organizations for achieving environmental and social outcomes, including climate-related targets. For more information, please click here.

Ifakara Innovation Hub (IIH) is a community of inspiration, ideation, and collaboration for solution development with a focus on health and rural livelihoods. IIH extends the innovation ecosystem to rural Tanzania by realistically considering the trade-offs between knowledge exploration, i.e. research and exploitation of technological innovations (product development and testing), and the establishment of innovations that are compatible with existing social, economic, and governance systems. For more information, please click here.

The AfroGreen ClimAccelerator aims to foster innovative and sustainable solutions that contribute to the ecosystem’s efforts to address the impacts and risks of climate change. It is the successor of the Westerwelle Startup Haus Arusha pilot program for ten women-led early-stage green startups that are developing sustainable solutions and growing their markets through capacity building. With Cohort 2, The Embassy supported 20 early-stage HIOs from Tanzania working on business ideas that take climate change into account. For more information, please click here.

AFRICAF (Africa Startup Growth & Investment Catalyst Facility) is a structured, investment-driven facility implemented by Ennovate Ventures Foundation, designed to identify, strengthen, and scale high-potential Tanzanian startups and SMEs by closing the gap between innovation and invest ability operating through three integrated pillars of catalytic capital, investor-led technical assistance, and market connections, including matching grants of up to USD 20,000 per venture and access to the VentureRoom digital platform that hosts vetted deal flow and connects enterprises with aligned investors.

The Embassy of Switzerland in Tanzania is a key funding and strategic partner, contributing directly to the facility's technical assistance delivery and the development of the VentureRoom platform anchoring AFRICAF's core programmatic activities and enabling the generation of a credible pipeline of 20 investment-ready ventures, with the collective ambition of closing USD 3 million in investment transactions, creating over 1,000 jobs, and delivering impact to more than 1.25 million beneficiaries across Dar es Salaam, the Lake Zone, Northern Zone, Zanzibar, and the Southern Highlands, with a deliberate focus on women- and youth-led businesses.

ThirdWay Partners (TWP) a impact investment and advisory firm with over 75 mandates executed across 30+ countries has been engaged by the Embassy of Switzerland in Tanzania (SDC) to conduct a structured four-month assessment and design study for a blended finance startup fund tailored to Tanzania's early-stage venture ecosystem, working in close collaboration with the Tanzania Startup Association and key ecosystem players.

Operating across three sequential phases rapid opportunity mapping, fund design and fundraising strategy, and targeted soft market testing TWP will assess funding gaps and startup landscape needs, co-design a high-level investment strategy with supporting financial analysis, and test the concept with a curated list of 10–15 potential investors and funders, ultimately delivering a market-validated fund concept that could be developed into an operational vehicle.

Switzerland's support through SDC anchors this entire design process commissioning and co-directing the engagement reflecting its strategic commitment to closing Tanzania's significant startup funding gap, where the country has attracted less than 2% of all startup investment on the continent since 2020, and positioning SDC as a catalyst for building a more structured, investor-ready, and well-capitalized entrepreneurial ecosystem in Tanzania.

The Tanzania Innovation Hubs Network (THN) an umbrella body uniting over 50 innovation hubs across Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar is implementing a five-program workplan for FY2025 focused on strengthening the country's startup support ecosystem through four key initiatives:

quarterly virtual peer-learning meetups, an international mentorship program pairing 40 hubs with global experts, a technical assistance program rolling out nine customizable toolkits, a shared Impact Measurement & Management (IMM) system to standardize how hubs track and report impact, and a nationwide startup ecosystem mapping and baseline impact assessment across all nine zones.

With a total program budget of TZS 204 million and the Swiss Embassy identified as a key co-funder contributing toward the mentorship program, IMM framework, and ecosystem mapping Switzerland's support would directly enable THN to equip over 50 hubs with shared performance standards and real-time impact data, track outcomes for over 5,000 innovators and entrepreneurs, and lay the institutional foundation for a self-financing, nationally coordinated hub network that delivers consistent, high-quality startup support across every region of Tanzania.