The APNI Founders Circle: How We Built a Room Our Community Needed

2026 is a big year for APNI. This year, we celebrate 10 years of existence in Ireland; a decade of showing up for African professionals, opening doors, and building community. At ten years, we didn't just want to look back. We wanted to build something new.

A significant portion of the people we serve are entrepreneurs and founders, building a business, chasing an idea, betting on a vision they can't let go of. We already had the Lions Den, our annual pitch competition, but we kept bumping into the same gap. Founders needed more than a stage. They needed a room. A sustained, intentional space to develop their ideas, learn the fundamentals, and find each other.

So we built one.

Introducing the APNI Founders Circle.

The Founders Circle is a 10-week accelerator programme designed for early-stage founders in the African professional community in Ireland. The concept was simple but deliberate, bring together a cohort, cover the essentials end to end, and keep it intimate enough to give every business the attention it deserved.

From the beginning, this programme was built on something that sits at the heart of everything APNI does: shared impact. Which is why bringing Philipa Kelly as the cohort mentor felt so natural. Philipa, a past Lions Den winner, had been getting a lot of questions from community members. How do I start? Where do I go? What support actually exists for someone like me? A Lions Den winner helping birth the next thing APNI was building. It couldn't have been more fitting.

With that, the very first APNI Founders Circle Entrepreneurship Programme was born.

48 Applications. 10 Founders. One Cohort.

We put out the call expecting around 20 applications instead we got 48 strong applications.

That number told us everything we needed to know. There was a real, unmet need sitting in our community  and it had been waiting for exactly this. We reviewed every application, conducted interviews, and shortlisted the 10 founders who made it into the very first Founders Circle cohort:

Chidumaga Mbata, Nicole Ajoku (Spiced Eats), Azeez Abdullahi (Express Grocery), Raphael Dosu (Vaultra Pay), Ebuonla Ajayi (Present), Percie Ikolo, Abigail (Seekly), Elizabeth Obiorah, Samuel Ojeabulu (Mustard), and Emmanuel Gyamfi (Southside Sports).

We welcomed them to the circle.

Nine Weeks of Showing Up

On the 24th of March, we officially kicked things off with an Introduction to Entrepreneurship session. Shalom Esiadi of Esca Finance opened the programme, sharing his founder journey with the kind of honesty and generosity that set exactly the right tone for what was to come.

Over nine virtual weeks, the cohort moved through the full arc of early-stage building,  validating an idea, setting up a company in Ireland, developing a product or service, marketing and branding, accessing the Irish business ecosystem, financial planning, and preparing to launch. Neto Ikpeme of Wella Health joined us to go deep on idea validation, bringing real-world expertise to one of the hardest early questions every founder faces.

Throughout the programme, speakers from within the APNI community,  Adesuwa Okesiji, Eniola Salami, Abi Williams, and Steven Kinvi,  brought their experience directly to the cohort, with guest speakers like Sarah Walker, Mercan Oral, and Padraic O’Rafferty rounding out a programme built on real expertise and lived experience.

But what made the nine weeks was the founders themselves.

Week after week, they showed up. They put in the work, gave each other honest feedback, asked the questions that needed asking, and made changes when the work called for it. They were also, quietly, building something beyond the curriculum,  a network of people who understood exactly what they were each trying to do, because they were trying to do it too.

The Pitch. The Growth. The Proof.

The virtual weeks closed with a pitching session,  each founder had three minutes to present what they'd built. Watching them pitch in week nine, knowing where each of them had started in week one, was something else entirely. The clarity. The confidence. Businesses that had arrived as ideas now had shape, direction, and a founder who could stand behind them.

Here's what some of them had to say:

"I started marketing publicly and published my website."

"I was able to create a clear direction for my business."

"I have been able to plan and build my business with a much better understanding."

And beyond everything on the curriculum,  they found each other. The community built inside the circle became one of its most valuable outputs.

We closed the programme the way it deserved,  in person. For many of the founders, it was the first time they had been in the same room together. They came together for a final workshop facilitated by Furthr, and everything that had been built across nine virtual weeks finally had a physical shape.

There is something about a room full of people who have spent weeks building in isolation, finally sitting together. That energy doesn't need to be described. It just needs to happen.

The first APNI Founders Circle cohort has completed the programme.

What they're building is just getting started.

And so are we .