NEC Corporation has initiated the Africa Corporate Innovation Program, a brand new effort to collaborate with African startups and deal with social points like agriculture and meals safety. This program is a part of NEC’s broader technique to foster partnerships with startups via its international startup accelerator, the NEC Innovation Challenge.
The program is being developed in partnership with the Shell Foundation and Double Feather Partners (DFP), a enterprise capital agency. It goals to leverage NEC’s technological capabilities and insights from international operations to boost sustainable agriculture and meals safety in Africa.
Through the initiative, startups that may deal with key challenges in Africa will probably be chosen to collaborate with NEC and its companions on proof-of-concept demonstration tasks. These tasks will make the most of NEC’s ICT platform CropScope to develop agricultural applied sciences, together with logistics options from farm to market.
The program started in April 2026 and can run PoC tasks via December 2026, with an analysis of outcomes scheduled for March 2027. The initiative goals to discover mid- to long-term enterprise growth and strategic partnerships to ascertain sustainable co-creation fashions.
Masayuki Furukawa, Director of the Private Sector Development Group at JICA, emphasised the significance of strengthening startup ecosystems in Africa and enhancing collaboration between African and Japanese firms. He famous that the initiative leverages expertise from the Next Innovation with Japan (NINJA) challenge.
Jonathan Berman, CEO of Shell Foundation, highlighted the necessity for partnerships that mix capital, know-how, and native experience to boost incomes and help a low-carbon pathway. He said that the Africa Corporate Innovation Program goals to cut back collaboration dangers and assist NEC work alongside African startups to construct scalable options.
Kohei Muto, CEO of Double Feather Partners, remarked that social challenges in Africa signify a frontier for innovation. He said that this system connects Japanese technological strengths with African startups’ innovation capabilities, aiming to construct sustainable enterprise fashions via impression funding and blended finance.
NEC will current the challenge on the SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 innovation convention, the place it can talk about constructing Japan–Africa innovation via co-creation and funding. This presentation will embody participation from JICA, Shell Foundation, Double Feather Partners, and different key stakeholders.