TunaShare Burundi · Youth Innovation Lab

Where young ideas grow.

Our Innovation Lab is the part of TunaShare Burundi that backs young founders — with women entrepreneurs at the front of the queue — to turn practical ideas into real, locally-rooted businesses.

What we offer

Incubation, courses and workshops

Three connected offerings under the TunaShare hub — designed so a curious 22-year-old can walk in for a workshop and walk out, two years later, running a real business.

Incubation

6–9 month cohorts pairing young founders with mentors, peer support and small grants. Women applicants are prioritised.

Technical courses

Practical, employment-focused courses: digital tools, basic accounting, mobile money, light coding and bike mechanics for the TunaRide track.

Workshops & masterclasses

Short, intense sessions on pricing, sales, customer interviews, branding and pitching — open to the wider Bujumbura founder community.

What we do

Six ways the Lab supports founders

Startup mentoring

One-to-one and small-group mentoring with operators who have actually built and scaled in Burundi.

Early-stage support

From idea to first paying customer: lean validation, simple business models, local market testing.

Community innovation

We back ideas rooted in real community problems — mobility, waste, food, services, environment.

Women founders priority

Around 70% of the entrepreneurs we have supported are women. That is a deliberate choice, not an accident.

Practical business development

Pricing, accounting basics, legal first steps, customer interviews — the unglamorous work that decides survival.

Local problem solving

We do not import startup theatre. We help founders build for Bujumbura, Gitega and Ngozi as they actually are.

Track record

Across TunaShare programs

Numbers below cover the full TunaShare Burundi ecosystem since 2023 — across incubation, women leadership and community projects. They are not TunaRide-specific.

3 yrs
TunaShare on the ground
40+
Young entrepreneurs supported
70%
Women-led ventures
12+
Startups scaled since launch
How it works

From idea to scaling startup

01

Apply

Tell us about your idea, your team and the problem you want to solve.

02

Discover

Short workshops to sharpen the idea, validate demand and shape a first business model.

03

Build

Mentoring sprints, peer cohort, hands-on support from launch to first revenue.

04

Scale

Connections to partners, follow-on funding routes, and the wider TunaShare network.

Sponsor the next cohort

Foundations, embassies and corporates: a sponsored Innovation Lab cohort funds mentoring, materials and seed micro-grants for a class of young Burundian founders — women-led by design.