Do it Now Now in the UK and Africa: 2019 Highlights

2019 has been an amazing year, full of challenges and milestones in equal measure. We want to share the successes with you, especially as without you as our champions and invaluable support network, this journey would have been so much more difficult.
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Now, as 2019 draws to a close we look back at what our incredible community has accomplished in the UK and Africa.

Highlights:

• 4 new initiatives launched (Moon Landing, AfriTech XYZ, As Seen In and Black and Good)
• Chief Do-er Bayo represented Do it Now Now in 5 countries (UK, Nigeria, South Africa, The Netherlands, Germany)
• DiNN currently operates in 6 African countries (Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Uganda, Zambia and Kenya)
• Revenue grew 400% from last year thanks to a stellar client list
• 2000 people in total supported across all initiatives
• Featured in Techcabal, Disrupt Africa, the Financial Times, Sifted and Ventureburn for the first time
• We became part of the Mayor of London’s Business Growth program for high potential startups in the city
• As a result of the work we do, Bayo chosen to take part in the inaugural cohort of Included VC, a Europe/UK diversity and inclusion VC program that teaches the ins and outs of the VC world to leaders of underserved communities for the benefit of those communities.
• Bayo was chosen as one of the top 100 most influential BAME leaders by the Financial Times and Inclusive Boards. ​​

​We’re building an organisation that supports underserved, predominantly black, people across the world to create better lives for themselves and their communities.

2019 began with a mission to think big in order to affect growth. In conversation with some of our fantastic champions over the past few months, I was driven to consider the opportunity an organisation like Do it Now Now can provide for BAME groups worldwide.

I learned that we needed to:

• Implement mechanisms that effectively encourage worldwide engagement. 
• Extend our understanding of the black experience beyond what we individually know and focus more on being research led in our interventions.
• Define clearly the position from which our initiatives benefit our community

In the UK, we’ve been focusing our work on helping to reduce social and economic inequality within the black community. The statistics below spur us to redress the balance in equality:

• 40% of the UK’s black households are living in poverty.
• 55% of the UK’s black community are on benefits.
• 48% of black people in the UK think they can affect decision making in their local area (higher than any other racial demographic).
• 8% of black people in the UK take part in local decision making. 
• 25% of black people in the UK volunteer at least once a month (the highest rate for any racial demographic).

Through initiatives like Black and Good (our support of black social entrepreneurs) and Moon Landing (our support of black female and non-binary local community leaders), we’re contributing to a world in which black people can gain the tools and resources needed to effectively impact the structures that affect the mobility of all of our lives on a daily basis. We’re grateful to have been funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to do this.

Empowering African founders to unlock growth potential in their communities

We also learned the following about Africa-based, VC-backed startup founders that have raised over $100K:
 

• 97% of the founders have a bachelor’s degree, 58% have a Masters degree.
• 1 in 5 founders went to 1 in 7 universities (none of which are in Africa)
• 66% of the founders have studied in the UK, US, or in France.
• 1 in 2 of the founders has over 5 years international work experience (expats are usually from the US, UK, and France).

From this information, we created AfriTech XYZ; a program that supports high potential, early-stage startups across 6 African countries through an individualised mentorship program supported by skilled volunteers around the world. Our initial cohort has gone extremely well:
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• +120 - The number of mentors we currently have in our network
• 70% - The percentage of them based in the UK
• 40% - The percentage of them that are technology experts
• 20% - The percentage of them based in Africa
• 15% - The percentage of them that are investment professionals
• 10% - The percentage of them based outside the UK/Africa

We are extremely excited and incredibly humbled by the interest of this group of truly wonderful people in something we created. 

Much more news to come on the progress of this program in 2020, but I think we’ve stumbled on something that could significantly impact the dearth of the African tech ecosystem and allow for a stronger, more effectively supported pipeline of startups to grow out of the continent. 

In Africa, we want to support the democratisation of access to key opportunities and information that will catalyse the growth of startups and their ability to get funded. We’re working to ensure that we can bridge as many of those gaps as possible through the AfriTech XYZ program. 

Thank you for your support in 2019, we hope to continue receiving your support in 2020.