KILNKILN KILN.
Applications closed · Algiers · 3–7 December 2026

KILN.

Build it here.ابنِه هنا

Africa's AI and deep tech hackathon. Four weeks of qualification, five days in Algiers, one stage.

3–7 December 2026 · in-market programme Algiers · Algeria 5–7 December · inside the African Startup Conference, CICA
Participant hub Partner with KILN Applications are closed. Selected teams sign in to the hub
5
days in market, three of them inside the ASC
4 weeks
virtual bootcamp before anyone travels
5
tracks — four sectors plus one open category
US$60,000
the ceiling on six-month soft landing support for the winning venture
US$5m
could be deployed by a targeted investor bench managing up to US$500m
In proud partnership with
African Startup Conference 2026
CICA, Algiers · 5–7 December 2026
Why Algiers, why December

A trade moment, not a demo day.

The African Startup Conference runs at the International Conference Centre in Algiers from 5 to 7 December 2026, convened by Algeria's government with the AfCFTA Secretariat. KILN's finale runs inside it.

The room is already the right room

ASC is positioned around African startups and SMEs, investment and regional collaboration under the AfCFTA industrialisation agenda. Teams that finish KILN pitch into that, not into an empty hall.

North–South, on purpose

Algiers is the venue, not the ceiling. The 2026 edition is delivered by partners in Algeria and South Africa, with Salvy VentureCorp joining from Nigeria, because the market access question is a cross-border one.

Built, not pitched

Every team arrives with something already running: a prototype, a pilot or paying users. Algiers is where it gets ready for a new market, and sponsors meet working products against their real operational problems.

Precedent. The 2025 edition ran at the CIC in Algiers with Algeria's Minister of Startups present — 200 teams registered, 16 selected.
The programme

Qualify. Fire. Finale.

Three stages over two months. The December place is contingent on the November work, which is why the cohort finishes.

Stage 01
November 2026 · four weeks, four sessions

Bootcamp

Virtual, delivered jointly across the national cohorts so one session reaches founders in three markets at once. Venture fundamentals, productisation, pitch and commercial readiness. Attendance and completion recorded against each participant. Not everyone who starts travels.

Stage 02
3–4 December 2026 · Algiers

Firing

A market access readiness camp. Teams arrive on 2 December, and the in-market programme opens on the 3rd: refining each team's product packaging and route to market entry, with mentors on hand. This is where a working product gets ready for a new market.

Stage 03
5–7 December 2026 · CICA, inside the African Startup Conference

Finale

Demos and pitches on the floor of the ASC, judged by an investor panel drawn from funds across Algiers, Lagos, Cape Town, Paris and Tokyo. Winners carry into a six-month market-entry landing in 2027 rather than stopping at the applause.

Stage 01 · Bootcamp speakers

Who the cohort hears from in November.

Four Mondays online, 17:00–18:30 SAST (16:00 in Algiers and Lagos), for all three national cohorts at once. Operators, builders and judges, one hard question per session.

Bootcamp host · all four sessions

CEO, Thetha Digital

Formerly Project Management Specialist at Naspers Labs

Hosts the road to Algiers

Thetha Digital
Mon 2 Nov · 17:15

Managing Partner, Four10 Ventures

Formerly Executive Director of the Founders Factory Africa venture studio

“Finding a problem worth solving”

Four10 Ventures
Mon 2 Nov · 17:40

Head of Product, iiDENTIFii

Formerly Chief Product Officer of OkHi and Head of Product at Founders Factory Africa

“The person with the problem”

iiDENTIFii
Mon 2 Nov · 18:05

Program Coordinator, DjazairIA

TechWomen 2025 Emerging Leader

“Travel and visas”

DjazairIA
Mon 9 Nov · 17:10

PhD candidate in AI for radiology, Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam

DAAD NeT-AI fellow · Board member, MICCAI SIG on Open Data

“AI, data and realistic scope”

Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam
Mon 9 Nov · 17:45

Independent security researcher, Studio Majiet

AI Engineer at OceanHub Africa · Mastercard Foundation Baobab Fellow

“Security, data protection and trust”

Studio Majiet
Mon 16 Nov · 17:10

Co-founder and Managing Director, BMEC Technologies

Aeronautical and biomedical engineer · Session partner

“Designed not to crack: risk and elastic design”

BMEC Technologies
Mon 16 Nov · 17:45

Head of Investments, Launch Africa Ventures

Formerly VP of Fund Operations at Ingressive Capital · Host of The Grinders Table

“Crossing the first border”

Launch Africa Ventures
Mon 23 Nov · 17:10

Founder, B4B Labs

Board member, France Payments Forum

“What the jury rewards”

B4B Labs

More to be announced.

Chi Chi XuThetha Digital
Bootcamp host · all four sessions

Chi Chi Xu

CEO, Thetha Digital

Hosts the road to Algiers

Chi Chi Xu is the founder and CEO of Thetha Digital, a Cape Town educational digital agency that creates South African content and builds technology to upskill, educate and mentor young people, including Signo, a South African Sign Language to audio translator. Its clients include the UCT Futures Think Tank, Tuksnovation and North-West University. From 2018 to 2021 she was a project management specialist at Naspers Labs, managing its platform, mobile app and programme content; the team produced the videos for 45 short micro-courses on socio-emotional skills in-house. Before that she spent a decade in digital marketing and brand building, at MWEB, Revlon and the UK's OneFamily, as a moderator of UCT-accredited internet marketing and social media courses for GetSmarter, and through her own brand, Nails by Chi Chi, whose clients included Cosmopolitan South Africa, Revlon and South African Fashion Week. She holds an MA (Merit) in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries from the University of the Arts London.

LinkedIn
Malanee HuttonFour10 Ventures
Mon 2 Nov · 17:15

Malanee Hutton

Managing Partner, Four10 Ventures

“Finding a problem worth solving”

Malanee Hutton is the founder and Managing Partner of Four10 Ventures, a venture consultancy that works with founders, funds, investors and institutions as an execution partner, turning strategy into ventures that scale. Before Four10, she spent five years at Founders Factory Africa (now 54 Collective), most recently as Executive Director of its venture studio, where she led venture design and the Gen F programme, which has helped launch more than 20 startups across Africa. Earlier, at RMB, she headed seeding and fintech ecosystem management for the FOUNDeRY innovation unit and led experience design at RMB Digital, after roles at Investec and Nedbank. She is an alumna of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

LinkedIn
Roger NortoniiDENTIFii
Mon 2 Nov · 17:40

Roger Norton

Head of Product, iiDENTIFii

“The person with the problem”

Roger Norton is Head of Product at iiDENTIFii, which builds a trusted digital identity layer for some of Africa's largest financial institutions. He has spent more than 13 years building and scaling products for African markets and has helped build more than 80 tech products. Before joining iiDENTIFii in October 2026, he was Chief Product Officer at OkHi, which tackles addressing in emerging markets, and Head of Product at Founders Factory Africa (now 54 Collective), where his team worked inside portfolio startups. He co-founded Trixta, serving as COO, and earlier built and ran the startup studio Playlogix. He created the Lean Iterator, a validation process that takes founders from idea to product to business, and wrote Start Here (2014), a book on building a startup. Based in Cape Town, he mentors at accelerators and incubators, is active in Silicon Cape, sits on the board of Coder:LevelUp and has made angel investments.

LinkedIn
Khaoula MouhebDjazairIA
Mon 2 Nov · 18:05

Khaoula Mouheb

Program Coordinator, DjazairIA

“Travel and visas”

Khaoula Mouheb is Program Coordinator at DjazairIA, the AI incubator in Algiers that hosts KILN in Algeria. In 2025 she was selected for TechWomen, the U.S. Department of State's programme for emerging women leaders in STEM, and spent her placement in San Francisco as an AI and UX design research mentee at Autodesk. Before joining DjazairIA she was an information systems engineer at the Caisse de Garantie des Marchés Publics, and for three years she worked freelance as a motion graphic designer and art director. She holds a master's degree in information technology from the École nationale Supérieure d'Informatique (ESI) in Algiers. This year she took part in InnoSafar Bavaria 2026, an exchange between the Algerian and Bavarian startup ecosystems.

LinkedIn
Kaouther MouhebBiomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam
Mon 9 Nov · 17:10

Kaouther Mouheb

PhD candidate in AI for radiology, Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam

“AI, data and realistic scope”

Kaouther Mouheb is a PhD candidate at the Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam (BIGR), where she works on AI for radiology, including federated deep learning for diagnosing dementia. She sets up and runs federated learning across hospital sites, so models learn from data that never leaves each hospital, and built an open-source pipeline that uses a locally run large language model to turn free-text radiology reports into structured data, published in European Radiology. She also fine-tunes vision foundation models where labelled data is scarce, and tests how they hold up across hospitals, scanners and populations. She went to school in Algiers, studied computer engineering in Türkiye and took the Erasmus Mundus master's in Medical Imaging and Applications, and was a winner of the 2022 ACR–NCI–NVIDIA federated learning challenge at MICCAI. She is a DAAD NeT-AI fellow and sits on the board of the MICCAI Special Interest Group on Open Data.

LinkedIn
Mikaeel MajietStudio Majiet
Mon 9 Nov · 17:45

Mikaeel Majiet

Independent security researcher, Studio Majiet

“Security, data protection and trust”

Mikaeel Majiet is an AI engineer at OceanHub Africa, a Cape Town organisation that connects, supports and invests in ventures in the blue economy, where he started as an AI intern in 2025. He also works as an independent security researcher through Studio Majiet, testing how an outsider could reach a company's customer data, accounts or production systems, and helping its engineers fix and retest what he finds. Before that he founded HealthHarmony, which connected patients with healthcare providers through personalised search-and-filter booking, and ran it from 2023 to 2025. He is a Mastercard Foundation Baobab Fellow, was selected for the Young African Leaders Initiative, and was the youngest alumnus of CatalyzU's Advanced Venture Capital Fellowship. He is studying for a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at Walsh College.

LinkedIn
Raphael SmithBMEC Technologies
Mon 16 Nov · 17:10

Raphael Smith

Co-founder and Managing Director, BMEC Technologies

“Designed not to crack: risk and elastic design”

Raphael Smith is co-founder and Managing Director of BMEC Technologies, a Cape Town engineering firm that designs and builds bespoke solutions across hardware, electronics, software, automation and medical devices, and runs technical risk reviews for ventures taking technology to market. Trained as an aeronautical and biomedical engineer, he holds a BSc in Aeronautical Engineering from Wits and an MSc(Med) in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Cape Town, and has published research on control systems and breast imaging. He has led BMEC since 2012.

LinkedIn
Uwem UwemakpanLaunch Africa Ventures
Mon 16 Nov · 17:45

Uwem Uwemakpan

Head of Investments, Launch Africa Ventures

“Crossing the first border”

Uwem Uwemakpan is Head of Investments at Launch Africa Ventures, a pan-African venture capital fund that invests at seed and pre-Series A, where he leads the deployment of its second seed fund. Before that he was VP of Fund Operations at Ingressive Capital, running operations for its US$10 million Fund I and US$50 million Fund II and leading investments in a portfolio of more than 30 African startups, including Mono, Float, Remedial Health and Carry1st. He was on the founding team of the Tony Elumelu Foundation's Entrepreneurship Programme, a US$100 million commitment to identify, train, mentor and fund entrepreneurs across Africa, where as programme manager he ran application review, due diligence and seed capital disbursement. For five years he directed Startup Grind's Lagos chapter, and he sat on the SXSW Pitch advisory board. He hosts The Grinders Table podcast, holds an Executive MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology, and completed the Africa Venture Finance Programme at Oxford's Saïd Business School.

LinkedIn
Mehdi LabbaniB4B Labs
Mon 23 Nov · 17:10

Mehdi Labbani

Founder, B4B Labs

“What the jury rewards”

Mehdi Labbani is the founder of B4B Labs, an advisory firm that works with financial institutions, companies and organisations on banking models, payment systems and technology architecture in the era of artificial intelligence and programmable finance. He has spent more than 28 years at the intersection of technology, finance and business strategy, in consulting, strategic leadership and business-unit management. He is a board member of the France Payments Forum, where he contributes to its work on digital currencies, stablecoins, programmable money and AI in financial services, and is Vice President for Web3 training at Blockchain Innov. A former blockchain trainer and project mentor at Alyra, he mentors and judges at hackathons in French schools. He is a computer science engineer from EPITA, holds a postgraduate diploma in business management from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and is a TEDx speaker.

LinkedIn
Tracks

Four sectors, plus one open category.

Chosen because they are where the continent's dependency is most expensive to keep importing.

HealthTechDiagnostics, care delivery, health data and systems that work inside real clinical environments.
BiotechBioprocessing, diagnostics manufacture, agricultural and industrial biology.
AgriTechYield, input efficiency, cold chain, traceability. Food sovereignty, not food apps.
FinTechCross-border payments, SME credit, market infrastructure under AfCFTA.
Open CategoryA real operational challenge submitted by a sponsor. Teams build against a named problem with a named owner.
What the winners get
Soft landing support worth up to
US$60,000

Six months of soft landing support, not a cheque and a handshake.

This is support, not prize money. The winning venture gets six months of structured market entry into markets it has never sold in, delivered by the three organising partners, SNDBX Innovation Centre, DjazairIA and Salvy VentureCorp, and funded by them rather than from public money. Outcomes are tracked for those six months.

Cape Town · up to US$30,000 of supportSix months of market entry into South Africa — introductions, compliance, customer development and workspace, delivered by SNDBX Innovation Centre.
Algiers · up to US$30,000 of supportSix months of market entry into Algeria, hosted and delivered by DjazairIA.
Lagos · up to US$30,000 of supportSix months of market entry into Nigeria, hosted and delivered by Salvy VentureCorp.

Judged by investors

We are targeting an investor bench drawn from funds managing up to US$500 million across five markets. Together they could deploy up to US$5 million into ventures coming out of the programme. Confirmations in progress.

Sponsor prizes

Category and named prizes sit alongside the main award — hosting, infrastructure and risk review among those in discussion.

Six months of contact

Outcomes are tracked for six months past the finale. What the cohort does afterwards is the measure, not what it demos on the day.

Who should apply

A highly selective process. Start early and put your best work forward.

Selection is on merit, against a weighted scorecard judged by an independent jury. Places are not sold and none are reserved. Only selected teams go into the November bootcamp, which is the preparation for Algiers — and every session in that series has to be attended online for a team to be in contention for December.

What every team needs, in any country

National cohorts

Each partner selects its own national cohort against the same universal criteria and the same weighted scorecard. Country-specific eligibility is set by the partner running that selection.

South AfricaClosed
Selected by SNDBX Innovation Centre

Ten to twenty South African founders travel as a named delegation, with outcomes reported to programme partners.

  • Registered South African entity, trading, with a tax compliance status pin
  • Validated domestically and not yet exporting — the first cross-border market is the point
  • A director or founder with contracting authority able to travel 2–8 December
  • Valid passport with at least six months remaining
  • Willing to be named in cohort reporting and to have outcomes tracked for six months

Turnover under R40 million, and majority black ownership or turnover under R5 million, are tested separately, along with women and youth ownership, which some funders prioritise. They decide whether a delegate place can be funded or supported by a corporate enterprise development contribution, or a government department, public agency or an entity they fund or are affiliated with. They do not affect selection, and the jury does not see them.

Travel costs. Delegates are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation. We are working to secure flights and accommodation through enterprise development and corporate sponsorship, but this is not guaranteed and no place depends on it.
AlgeriaClosed
Selected by DjazairIA

The home cohort. Algiers is the host city, so the December programme involves no international travel for Algerian teams.

  • Same universal criteria and the same weighted scorecard as every other cohort
  • Available for all four online bootcamp sessions across November
  • Available in Algiers for the full in-market programme, 3–7 December
  • Willing to be named in cohort reporting and to have outcomes tracked for six months

Country eligibility and cohort size for Algerian teams are set by DjazairIA.

NigeriaClosed
Selected by Salvy VentureCorp

Up to ten Nigerian teams travel to Algiers as a delegation coordinated by Salvy VentureCorp.

  • Same universal criteria and the same weighted scorecard as every other cohort
  • Available for all four online bootcamp sessions across November
  • A director or founder able to travel to Algiers, 2–8 December
  • Valid passport with at least six months remaining
  • Willing to be named in cohort reporting and to have outcomes tracked for six months

Country eligibility and cohort size for Nigerian teams are set by Salvy VentureCorp.

Travel costs. Teams arrange and fund their own travel and accommodation unless separately supported. No place depends on travel support.

Key dates

To 16 Oct
Applications open. Team, product, track and market entry intent.
16 October
Applications close. Late entries are not reviewed.
Late October
Jury review and selection. National cohorts confirmed and notified.
November
Bootcamp. Four weeks, four sessions, all cohorts together.
2 December
Arrival in Algiers. Prep day.
3–4 December
Market access readiness camp. Packaging, route to market entry, mentoring.
5–7 December
African Startup Conference. Demos, pitches and the finale at CICA.
2027
Market-entry landings. Six months, tracked.

Apply

Applications for KILN 2026 are closed.

Thank you to every team that applied. Each country's organisers are contacting their applicants directly.

Selected teams: accept your place, send your invitation-letter details and hand in your bootcamp work in the KILN hub, using the access code your organisers sent you.

Sign in to the hub

Partners

Delivered by its partners, not underwritten by anyone.

KILN is a private-private programme. Each partner carries its own costs, and the prize is funded between the organising partners.

Hosts of the 2026 edition

In proud partnership with

Supporting partners

Partnership tiers

DeliverableBronzeSilverGoldDiamond
Visibility across networks and media✓✓✓ Premium✓ Exclusive
Physical stand and networking access—✓✓✓
Session in the November bootcamp—✓✓✓
Seat on the expert jury——✓✓
Open Category challenge, with source code———✓

Tier pricing on application. In-kind contributions — infrastructure, credits, mentoring, prizes — are treated on the same ladder as cash.

Partner with KILN

Tell us what you're considering and the partner team will come back to you. Pricing and in-kind terms are agreed directly, not published.

  • Open Category challenges need to be agreed before the bootcamp starts in November, so teams can prepare against them.
  • Bootcamp sessions run online across all three national cohorts at once.
  • In-kind support sits on the same ladder as cash.
Optional. Include the country code, for example +27 or +213.
How your information is handled

Messages go to the KILN partners' shared inbox, run by Dala For Africa (Pty) Ltd on Google Workspace, and are read by the partner organisations so the right person can reply. They are kept for 24 months. To see, correct or delete what you sent, say so through this form.

Questions

Before you apply.

Does it cost anything to apply?

No. Applications are free and no place is sold. Selection is by independent jury against a weighted scorecard.

Who pays for travel to Algiers?

Delegates are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation costs. We are working to secure flights and accommodation through enterprise development and corporate sponsorship, but that is not guaranteed and no place depends on it. Selection happens first and funding status does not affect it.

Do I have to attend the whole bootcamp?

Yes. The four weeks are the condition of the December place. Attendance and completion are recorded against each participant and reported to programme partners.

Can a solo founder apply?

You can apply, but teams of two to four are strongly preferred and at least one member must be able to build. Teams that include an international member tend to do better on localisation and cross-border readiness.

Who owns what we build?

Your team owns its intellectual property. Where a sponsor submits an Open Category challenge, the terms of that specific track are published with the challenge before you choose it.

What language is the programme in?

English, with Arabic and French support in Algiers. The bootcamp runs in English.

I want to sponsor or send a challenge. Who do I talk to?

Use the partnership form. Open Category challenges need to be settled before the bootcamp starts in November so teams can prepare against them.

Contact

Ask us anything.

Questions about eligibility, the bootcamp or the week in Algiers. Messages reach all the programme partners, so the right person answers.

  • Selected team? Sign in to the KILN hub with the access code your organisers sent you.
  • Sponsoring or sending a challenge? The partnership form gets there faster.
How your information is handled

Messages go to the KILN partners' shared inbox, run by Dala For Africa (Pty) Ltd on Google Workspace, and are read by the partner organisations so the right person can reply. They are kept for 24 months. To see, correct or delete what you sent, or anything in an application, say so through this form.