StartupAfricaRoadtrip is an innovation ecosystem “crowd” platform made by the fundamental contribution and effort of several volunteers. Today we want to tell about our fruitful collaboration with Movos team.

What is Movos?

MOVOS is a pro-bono initiative that aims at empowering entrepreneurs to foster the prosperity of their business while contributing to social and environmental challenges. To achieve this objective, MOVOS engages entrepreneurs into a working path to discuss how social impactful actions can positively affect the growth of their business, meet customers’ needs, match investors’ expectations, and give social value to their business.

How did the collaboration with StartupAfricaRoadtrip arise?

During the first months of 2020, MOVOS partnered with Startup Africa Roadtrip to train 4 Ugandan startups to think about their social impact strategy, integrate it in their corporate identity, and present it to investors during their pitch. Our objective was to help these entrepreneurs clarify and reinforce their social mission to strengthen their startup proposition and attract investors, especially the most social impact driven. The startups that took part in the project are: Zembo, HerHealth, Gorilla Conservation Coffee and Swipe2Pay.

What kind of work have you realized with the 4 startups?

The work done with the startups consisted of two dedicated workshops. In the first call, the MOVOS team posed a set of questions to the entrepreneurs to better understand the social impact potentially generated by the startup, their communication towards stakeholders, elements of differentiation from competitors, potential threats and challenges to achieve the desired social impact, the link between the social impact and the business model, and their scalability strategy. The entrepreneurs showed great interest and commitment to social and environmental local challenges, revealing how it was intrinsically connected to their business model and was very important for their consumers and stakeholders. During the second call, the MOVOS team worked with entrepreneurs to define the social mission and social value of their respective startups, as well as identifying social performance indicators and measures. This work helped to clarify the main social and environmental impacts that these startups can generate in their communities. In addition, we also tied their activities to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals that these startups contribute to, in order to help investors and stakeholders better understand their impacts.

What’s next?

We can’t wait to meet in Italy all the 4 Ugandan team for #StartupAfricaRoadshow! Through this project, we hope to connect and work with more entrepreneurs, in order to highlight their social impact to their stakeholders and implement impactful actions that also make business sense! www.movos.it