Yasser Biaz is the chief executive of UM6P Ventures, the venture fund of University Mohammed VI Polytechnic in Morocco, and he joins us today to talk about why it focuses on deeptech and builds and invests not just in spinouts from its home institution or even just across the country, but throughout Africa and beyond.

UM6P Ventures is a relatively young fund — it was set up in 2019 — but that hasn’t stopped it from coming up with some interesting programmes that even Silicon Valley, where Yasser spent the majority of his early career, could learn from.

Yasser also ponders why UM6P Ventures focuses on agrobioscience, health tech, energy, AI and industry 4.0, and why that means a report identifying Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya as the big players in Africa might not be telling the full story.

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“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)