Google Selects 15 African Startups for Its 10th AI Accelerator Cohort

Google has announced the 15 startups joining the tenth cohort of its Google for Startups Accelerator Africa — a milestone edition of a programme that has quietly become one of the most competitive pathways for African founders to access technical support, mentorship, and global networks.

The cohort was chosen from nearly 2,600 applications, representing an acceptance rate of less than one per cent. The three-month hybrid programme runs from April 13 to June 19, 2026, providing founders with dedicated mentorship, technical workshops focused on AI and machine learning, and access to Google’s global network. The programme is equity-free for all participants. 

Since its launch in 2018, the accelerator has supported 106 startups from 17 African countries, whose alumni have collectively raised over $263 million and created more than 2,800 jobs. 

The fifteen startups joining Class 10 include: Anda Africa from Angola, a mobility and fintech platform formalising, financing, and electrifying Angola’s informal moto-taxi workforce through AI-powered credit scoring; Bani from Nigeria, a cross-border payments infrastructure platform eliminating settlement delays for African businesses trading globally; and Safiri from Kenya, working on transport and mobility solutions to improve the movement of goods and people. Termii, also from Nigeria, offers APIs and communication tools allowing businesses to send messages, verify users, and manage customer engagement at scale. eMaisha Pay from Kenya focuses on financial services for farmers across agricultural value chains.

South African startups Loop and Vambo AI also made the cohort — Loop digitising mobility and payments across Africa, and Vambo AI building multilingual AI infrastructure powering translation, speech, and generative AI across African languages.

Nigeria’s four selected startups also include MasteryHive AI, an AI-native platform automating transaction reconciliation, fraud detection, and AML monitoring; and Regxta, which combines alternative data-driven credit scoring with a hybrid digital-agent distribution model to deliver financial products to unbanked micro businesses. 

Folarin Aiyegbusi, Head of Startup Ecosystem for Africa at Google, described the cohort as representative of a new wave of innovators driving economic growth and social impact across the continent.