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Global early-stage startups competition Seedstars World has opened applications for its event in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, which will see the winning startup given the chance to pitch for US$500,000 equity investment at the global final in Switzerland next year.

Seedstars World, which is hosting local events across Africa ahead of the global final, has already picked winners in Mozambique, Tunisia, Tanzania, South Africa, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Applications are open now until August 30 for the Ivory Coast leg of the competition on September 8, when up to 10 of the country’s best seed-stage startups will compete to represent the country at the global final.

This is the third year in a row Seedstars has hosted an event in Abidjan, with the competition taking place with the support of main sponsor TRECC, local ambassador Ifid and regional partners Enel, Orange and Microsoft.

“Seedstars World is a platform connecting investors to the next generation of startup entrepreneurs, pulling the spotlight from Silicon Valley and Western Europe. As this will be our third time to organise our event in Abidjan, our excitement levels and expectations are high. We have heard so much about the bustling startup ecosystem in Ivory Coast and we are now here to witness the reality,” said Anis Kallel, associate at Seedstars World.

“We are impressed by what we have seen in the continent so far and cannot wait to add startups from Ivory Coast onto our map.”

Companies applying to pitch at Seedstars Abidjan must be less than two years old, have raised less than US$500,000 in funding, have built a minimum viable product, and have regional and global scalability.

The winner of last year’s event in Abidjan was e-learning startup Etudesk, a web application that helps academic institutions, organisations and companies to easily create online learning programmes. Using Etudesk, users can set up their own learning platform in less than one minute, and create courses including things like video, quizzes, activities and certificate integration.

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