Sahara Foundation Reshapes Innovation Drive, Awards $130,000 to African Entrepreneurs
The Sahara Group Foundation has intensified its support for emerging innovators across Africa after overhauling its Sahara Impact Fund (SIF) and Making A Difference Around Africa (MADAA) programmes to tackle persistent gaps between early-stage ideas and market readiness.
The Foundation noted that insights from earlier cycles revealed widening hurdles for young innovators, prompting both programmes to be re-engineered into a single, streamlined innovation pipeline designed to remove barriers, strengthen capacity and ensure long-term sustainability for beneficiaries. More than 2,000 Africans applied for the 2025 cycle, with about 300 shortlisted for a Capacity Building Workshop delivered by Sahara Group experts.
Speaking at the Awards and Gala Night in Lagos, the Executive Director of Sahara Group, Ade Odunsi, said the organisation’s philosophy of EXTRApreneurship continues to guide its development work. “Sahara started out with the mindset of EXTRApreneurship. Your businesses must have unique value propositions that can continually be reengineered for more impact through innovation,” he said.
The Foundation awarded more than $130,000 to 20 outstanding African EXTRApreneurs under the SIF Cohort 4 and MADAA initiatives. The grants included $10,000 each to innovators driving solutions such as sustainable skincare, agro-processing, scientific education, health technology, mobility support and eco-friendly repellents, with recipients drawn from Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Botswana and South Africa.
Another group of entrepreneurs from Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya received $5,000 each for ventures spanning clean-energy briquettes, recycling technology, agricultural lubrication and organic farming, while five other innovators from Nigeria and Uganda secured $1,000 grants for projects ranging from educational technology and agroecology to energy systems, smoke-free products and household polish manufacturing.
Programme Supervisor, David Ayinde, said the Foundation’s intervention extends far beyond funding.
“We have built a capacity development and business advisory framework that equips our EXTRApreneurs with business intelligence, financial strategy, governance discipline, and commercial readiness to scale their solutions sustainably across African markets,” he said.
Director of the Foundation, Chidilim Menakaya, added that the redesigned model ensures a clear pathway from concept to scale.
“By reinventing the Sahara Impact Fund and elevating the MADAA programme, we are closing the loop between discovery, support, and scale… creating real pathways for them to grow sustainable solutions,” she said.
“Ultimately, this integrated approach ensures that promising EXTRApreneurs have a clear, structured, and fully supported route to delivering measurable impact across their communities.”
Executive Director of Sahara Group, Dr Kola Adesina, urged the innovators to maintain resilience, discipline and creativity, noting that such qualities would enable them to achieve “transformative impact across the continent with the added incentive of scaling their businesses for global competitiveness.”
The programme’s training sessions covered business strategy, sustainability, governance, regulatory compliance, brand positioning, commercial management and a wide range of financial and legal advisory processes.
The public has been encouraged to visit the Foundation’s website for further information on the Sahara Impact Fund, the MADAA initiative and other programmes.
