The World Bank Group’s infoDev program has been working in Africa for years, helping to strengthen the ecosystem for digital entrepreneurs and seeding digital incubators in Kenya, Senegal, and South Africa.

Start-ups in these “mLabs” have developed or improved more than 500 digital products or services, and some 100 early stage firms raised over $15 million in investments and grant funding. But is this the answer to scaling growth entrepreneurs on the continent? In recent years, a common grievance expressed by investors is that incubator and accelerator graduates are not “investible.”

Yet, acceleration programs are gaining traction in Sub-Saharan Africa and remain a popular method for new business creation. Our own assessments identified both a mentoring and investment gap, so we designed regional and pan-African acceleration programming to address just these issues. We launched XL Africa, a pan-African acceleration program... — blog.wb.org/blogs