HiiL Innovation Hub–East Africa Justice Entrepreneurship Program for Startups 2024

HiiL Innovation Hub – East Africa is a social enterprise dedicated to finding and supporting the most promising justice entrepreneurs in East Africa. We seek startups that solve people’s justice problems and aspire for them to have access to justice at work, at home, in their neighbourhoods, and in business.

We support startups that empower people with break-through innovations to create better:

working conditions with their employer
separation terms with their spouse
protection against theft, fraud, and violence
arrangements about noise, damages, and property access with their neighbour

housing maintenance and rent conditions with their landlord
agreements on ownership, registration, and use of land
contracts, fraud protection, and compliance for their small business.

Justice Entrepreneurship School

The Justice Entrepreneurship School is HiiL’s flagship incubation programme that supports early-stage entrepreneurs that are preventing or resolving pressing justice needs in their communities. The programme is catered to startups in the incubation stage, where there is a Minimal Viable Product or Service, with little traction and runs for a period of 7 weeks. Focused on delivering high-quality action learning, the programme focuses on business modelling, storytelling, pitching and justice design thinking. This year the programme is focused in supporting innovative early stage startups in Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi.

During the incubation programme, the startups will work on getting their product into the hands of users as fast as possible, aggressively and consistently obtain their feedback, and refine the MVP accordingly. This includes getting enough users and running tests on them.

Are you a Kenyan, Burundian or Rwandese Startup interested in being part of the programme?

Aim and Benefits

The Justice Entrepreneurship School offers a six-week-long programme that provides justice startups with:

A three day residential boot camp delivered by industry specialists: business growth, team & leadership, design thinking, and much more.
Coaching sessions and mentorship on topics of your choice.
Access to HiiL’s regional network of justice leaders, legal tech organisations, and top-level researchers.
Certification and a learning platform for self-service.
A chance to win non equity grant funding at the end of the programme during the Justice Innovation Circle demo day.

Requirements

The programme is suitable for Startups that:

Have a solution that meets the needs of those with unmet justice needs who struggle to access effective, easy-to-understand, affordable, and accessible means to prevent or resolve their justice problems. Specifically we are looking at solutions that address the following themes:
- Kenya: Crime, Sexual & Gender-Based Violence and Support for MSMEs.
- Burundi: Crime, Land, Employment and Support for MSMEs.
- Rwanda: Crime and Sexual & Gender-Based Violence.
Have a basic product or service, that is, an existing prototype or minimal viable problem.
Have some traction, that is, the product is in hands of a small number of early adopter users, where we see enough evidence that this product or business can work.
Be led by a team of 2 or 3 committed and passionate co-founders who shares a drive for justice and impact.