Our Story

The idea for Build Africa Alliance was born in 2021 when Founder and CEO, Florence A Otim, funded and supported the seven small businesses and community projects below in her family’s home town of Kalongo in Northern Uganda via a development grant in memory of her late father.

Florence believed that for a tree to grow, one had to feed the roots. This essentially meant investing in grassroots enterprises to support the growth and development of the town, and ultimately, the country. She wanted funding to reach the recipients directly and immediately, with no delays, strings attached or repayments required that could become a debt burden.

She offered microgrants ranging from £50 to £200 and publicity via her local news website, The Kalongo Times, to five businesses and three community projects, and the impact was immediate and positive. It enabled the entrepreneurs to buy stock and scale operations, and the three projects to support their organisations.

For Florence, it raised the question: if one individual with such a limited budget could have this impact, what could  1,000, 10,000 or even 1 million individuals achieve?

This inspired her vision for a much larger movement of a mobilised African diaspora alliance committed to building the continent from the ground up.

That vision has been realised four years later in the Build Africa Alliance, which replaces the previous informal development grant but maintains the partnerships with the original grant recipients and stakeholders.

The Build Africa Alliance is a UK-based social enterprise dedicated to supporting early-stage African startups through diaspora-funded micro-grants. We believe small contributions, when combined, can create powerful economic change across the continent.

Our mission is simple — Fund African startups. Strengthen local economies. Build Africa’s future.

Below are the seven businesses and projects we have supported: