A video showing former Vice President of Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osinbajo announcing the call to young Africans to apply for the Timbuktoo Fintech Start-up Accelerator Programme has been spotted on WhatsApp.
The two-minute-34 seconds long video has gone viral, having been shared many times across many groups on WhatsApp as of Friday, September 20, 2024.
Screenshot of the viral video
Verification
A keyword search indicates that there is indeed an initiative that goes by that name. The Timbuktoo Fintech Startup Accelerator Programme is a Pan-African initiative of the Timbuktoo Fintech Hub in Lagos, Nigeria, open to technology-focused entrepreneurs and startup founders across Africa aged between 18 and 35.
The accelerator programme is a fellowship dedicated to young Africans who are deploying technology solutions in the financial services sector, advancing the SDGs and start-ups that demonstrate high scalability either through digital distribution channels or the ability to scale their user base rapidly across markets in Africa, among other things.
The mentorship programme is a $1 billion initiative by the UNDP, designed for African governments, and the private sector to ignite start-up innovation across the continent.
The announcement was first seen on the UNDP website on May 28, 2024. The video of Prof Osinbajo announcing the call for applications to the maiden edition of the Timbuktoo programme was first published online on his YouTube page on 14 June, 2024. Prior to this, former Vice President Osinbajo, had announced the call on his personal website on June 13, 2024.
And the timeline indicated on the UNDP website is as follows:
· Applications and Selection Process: May 2024 – June 2024.
· Bootcamp: July 2024 (Attendance in Lagos, Nigeria from July 7 – 21, 2024).
· Incubation & Acceleration: August 2024 – December 2024.
Going by the timeline and other sources, the application has closed and selection of the maiden cohort has been done. On July 10, 2024, a video online showed that Participants for the Timbuktoo Fintech Accelerator Programme had been inaugurated.
It was also reported that the pioneer cohort of 42 start-ups from 31 African countries who were selected to participate in the inaugural Timbuktoo Fintech Start-up Accelerator Programme were unveiled on July 10 2024. Find here evidence that the programme had long started.
We tried to know if the application has been re-opened, as the viral video on WhatsApp suggested. So we went to the UNDP website where it was first announced, and clicked on the application icon. We discovered that the application had long closed.
Screenshot of the portal showing applications closed in June
While no date is fixed for the 2025 cohort of the Timbuktoo Fintech Start-Up Programme, what we found out is that the UNDP has a health pathway for young Africans in the health sector.
It is the Timbuktoo Healthtech Start-Up Accelerator Programme whose call for application opened on August 27, 2024 and will close on October 6, 2024. We suspect that the video of the former Vice President of Nigeria is being wrongly circulated as it has no relation to this Health cohort announcement.
Conclusion
From our findings therefore, the video of Professor Osinbajo being circulated on social media is an old video. It is therefore misleading.
