As the Chaloupe, a barge with a capacity of 340 people, made its way from the Embarcadère de Dakar, passing large container ships, rice cargo barges, and hospital ships docking at the port, our delegates witnessed the scale of investment at this strategic port of call, where the Port of Dakar, the nearest to Europe, North and South America, on the continent of Africa, makes it a key player in supply of goods to Senegal and neighboring West African countries, and which, centuries earlier, established its role in the trans-Atlantic trafficking of humans to the Americas.

Arriving at the island and greeted by the Fort of Gorée which was established in the 15th century and controlled alternatively by Portuguese, British and French as an outpost for their activities in West Africa, the island is at once beautiful, with specatalulary colored colonial style housing as well as evocative of the emotion of the events taking place here establishing a new world order, and bringing Africans forcibly to the new world, and, in the evening hours, one senses the haunting that lingers around the island.

Our launch event was organized at Keur Louise, a colonial house, dating from 1864, beautifully renovated by Gilles and Nadia Acogny, owners of a management consulting firm, Acosphere Consulting. After a short stroll from the Gorée pier, our visitors ambled into the house, greeted by an immaculate interior courtyard with arching doorways vividly colored in a faded pink.

Upstairs, in the Obama room, named in honor of the 44th President of the United State’s visit to the house during an official trip to the island in 2013, our guests discovered the galerie portion of the event : Canvases featuring overviews of startups nurtured by Wuri Ventures lined the walls of the room, as though at a high end art gallery.

Prior to this official launch, Wuri Ventures made 14 investments including into well- known African startup companies like Carry1st, Lori Systems, Whereismytransport, and others, including two investments in Senegalese companies, and others in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Ethiopia reflecting the Fund’s Pan-African focus.

Visitors in suits and casual dress admired the featured startups, from the EV company, that we incubated, called SolarBox, which adapts shipping containers into high capacity solar charging stations for electric 3-Wheelers to be debuted in Senegal this summer, to Chargel, a logistics company matching demand to GPS tracked cargo trucks, similarly to logistics companies like Kobo360 and Trella operating in the startup hubs of Nigeria and Egypt.

A robot, controlled through an App developed by Caytu Robotics, another Senegalese startup, founded by ex-Accenture Labs researcher Abdoulaye Faye and MIT postdoc and tenured professor Dr. Sidy Ndao, roamed the hallway. What attracted us to these delivery robots was the vision of their making deliveries on sidewalks across the globe in a futuristic example of cyber-physical outskilling similar to well-funded Silicon Valley companies like Coco and Nuro promising low cost and low carbon delivery for the major food delivery companies.

Not shying away from hard tech, our managing partner Tijan Watt believes in the capacity of deep tech to inspire and to encourage the next generation of entrepreneurs.

After a breaking of the fast, with a line queuing through the garden, visitors conversed in the beautiful stone lined courtyard of the historical house, with Kora music echoing in the background sitting at colorfully lit tables in the dusk of the setting sun.

Tijan Watt, founder and managing partner of Wuri Ventures took the podium, greeting the delegates and thanking them for coming to the launch event. He shared the story of his coming to Senegal at the age of 25 to be an entrepreneur back in 2001, before it was cool.

Watt explained to the gathered crowd the concept of Entrepreneurism, which is the concept that founders seek to change their societies and to create economic opportunity for themselves and their compatriots through entrepreneurship, instead of waiting for governments and international donors to do it for them.

Since launching his first startup in 2002 featuring a branded consumer product, called CRISTAL, which still exists 20 years later and which has become a household brand in the country, Watt has pursued entrepreneurship as a means to help create socially beneficial companies, creating jobs and generating economic opportunities for the youth at home, potentially stemming the tide of clandestine immigration which each year costs the lives of many African youth traveling on boats to Europe to escape their conditions.

After a career of company building, Watt has created 7 different companies, in Africa and in the US, some successful and some failed, Watt sought to leverage the learnings he has gathered over the years in support of other entrepreneurs. He started the journey of building Wuri Ventures through an Advisory business called African Tech Leaders, where he advised dozens of startups in the process of fundraising and seeking entry into leading global accelerators.

In 2019, Watt incorporated Wuri Ventures, and began investing, alongside industry veteran Jerome Cretegny, the former head of the IFC in Dakar, Senegal, where he led a growing office of 70 investment professionals in the regional hub for West Africa. Using personal capital, and organizing occasional SPVs, the pair made 6 investments in 2019 and 2020, generating strong returns on the initial portfolio serving to demonstrate track record for prospective investors into their fund.

Since then Wuri Ventures raised additional capital into their management company, in order to help to build out the Senegal infrastructure for the fund and to begin building a larger team. It also launched a Subscription fund, whereby executives and high net worth individuals, who are accredited investors may invest directly into the fund operated by Wuri Ventures.

Since then the company has made 8 additional investments and is targeting investing in up to 12 companies per year. Wuri Ventures has already deployed up to $2 million in support of African startups and is positioning as a strong Seed stage VC fund.

After a short and sweet launch event, our delegates stood in line to take the Chaloupe hope and to continue their evening to enjoy the vibrant restaurant scene in Dakar.

Joining the group, Aboulaye Faye, co-founder of Caytu Robotics, drove his mini robot down the cobblestone lined pathway, surrounded by excited children, boys and girls, living on the island, astonished by the brightly lit robot, illuminating the dark path. Perhaps this is the way to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.