Step into the control room.
A console, in direct access. How we work, what gets us going, the products that are running, the tools you can try, and a human when you need one.
Talk to a humanWe have no formula, we have a practice. Not the science, the experience.
Our method is lean: we start from the field, we form hypotheses, we test fast, we keep what holds. No 80-slide decks, but workshops where something is actually produced, prototypes tested against reality, and local coaches trained so the dynamic holds without us.
And running through every project: two commitments, women's entrepreneurship and the green and circular economy, plus one common thread, connecting support to finance.
Workshops and concrete tools,
not slides to sit through.
Our pillars of action
& our tools.
Four tracks, four sets of content. Click to switch track.
Women are not entrepreneurs like any others.
45% of the entrepreneurs Ovation supports are women. That figure is decided when the programmes are designed: the tools are the same for everyone, but we activate them differently, exactly where the mechanisms of exclusion operate. At least 40% women targeted from selection onwards, alternatives to collateral requirements, and gender-disaggregated tracking at every stage.
The paradox is well known: in sub-Saharan Africa one adult woman in four starts or runs a business, the highest rate in the world (GEM), yet they remain systematically under-funded for growth, with an estimated 42 billion dollar financing gap (AfDB / AFAWA). Reines en Scène in the DRC with Enabel, Pour Elles, RESAE in Guinea, B-Creative in Benin: every programme attacks that imbalance on the ground.
From a vague concept to real business.
In Kampala, with 30 entrepreneurs and local coaches, the circular economy felt like a distant concept. We drew the value chains together, looked for the waste, the avoided costs, the possible revenue — and the concept turned into projects: water recovered, energy used twice, machines living several lives.
Ovation's strength: taking on subjects still barely explored, doing the research, building the tools, and generating knowledge that makes the circular transition easier over the long term.
From idea to capital, without a break.
Acceleration without finance produces little, and so does finance without support. Ovation works at the heart of the missing middle: companies too structured for microfinance, not formal enough for banks. Our answer: making support and finance a single trajectory. A real maturity diagnostic (Abaca, 8 pillars), activation rather than training, applications made bankable, then qualified introductions to a network of impact funders, from the first ticket to institutional rounds.
Capital exists in Africa. What is missing is a flow of qualified applications and their matching with the right funders: that is exactly what we build, with gender as an engineering variable, not an add-on.
AI and digital in the service of the field.
We build digital products and applied AI to multiply the impact of our support work. From a two-minute diagnostic to conversational coaching over WhatsApp, technology speeds up scaling without ever replacing human follow-up.
The Ovation AI offer as a whole is presented separately: see the Ovation AI stream.
LIVE — in service · BETA — being run in · TOOL / DEMO — try it now
Ovation Academy
Conversational coaching over WhatsApp: AI plus human follow-up. 500+ entrepreneurs, 6 countries.
OpenInnovation Hub
Calls for ideas, teams, jury & scoring. Try the scoring in preview.
OpenSelect
Spotting and selecting high-potential project owners. One of the four Academy products.
Learn moreDigital maturity diagnostic
Six dimensions, your radar profile and your concrete levers.
StartToolbox
Ovation's methodological tools and an AI pitch generator.
OpenThe Academy coach
Try the coach, WhatsApp style. Nothing is recorded.
Try itA community of coaches
pushing towards the app.
490 coaches trained across three continents feed the field back to us. Next step: an app that equips and connects them. Save your place.
A human, when you need one.
A real conversation beats a thousand slides. Write to us: we reply quickly, and we set up a meeting if it makes sense for you as much as for us.
Write to the team