Nigerian edtech startup wins $10,000 UNDP prize, beating 1,429 applicants
Data Entry Academy, a Lagos-based edtech platform, won first place in UNDP’s pan-African edtech accelerator, taking home a $10,000 prize.
Data Entry Academy, a Lagos-based edtech platform, has won first place in the United Nations Development Programme’s Get Ready 4 timbuktoo EdTech accelerator, taking home a $10,000 prize after topping a field of 1,429 applicants from across Africa. The startup, founded by Chioma Ifeanyi-Eze, beat finalists from Egypt and Senegal during a July 1 pitch event in Dakar, Senegal. Another Nigerian startup, Varsity Scape, placed sixth among the top 10 winners.
According to UNDP, the 2026 accelerator attracted 1,429 applications from across Africa, with 1,099 startups meeting the eligibility criteria. Fifty startups were selected for the 12-week programme after nearly 2,850 blind evaluations by 19 independent experts. Twenty startups advanced to the final pitch, where 10 emerged as winners.
Founded in 2020, Data Entry Academy operates a 30-day online training programme that teaches workplace software skills, including spreadsheets, cloud accounting, invoicing, inventory management and payroll tools. The startup says it has trained more than 17,000 learners across Africa through courses delivered on Telegram and Teachable. Participants require only basic computer literacy to enrol, with learners ranging from job seekers and entrepreneurs to employees being upskilled by their organisations.
Data Entry Academy and Varsity Scape previously participated in the Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship, which provides selected startups with $100,000 in equity-free funding and advisory support. Data Entry Academy joined the programme’s second cohort in 2024.
The accelerator is part of UNDP’s broader timbuktoo initiative, launched at the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos with a goal of mobilising $1 billion over 10 years to support 10,000 startups and generate $10 billion in economic value across Africa. The initiative currently runs six pan-African thematic hubs, has trained 3,480 innovators, and operates 16 University Innovation Pods across the continent.
This echoes the 2010s fintech boom, when Nigerian startups like Flutterwave and Paystack emerged from accelerator programmes to become global players. The mechanism then was different, but the result was the same: Nigerian startups are proving they can compete with the best in Africa.
The winners: Data Entry Academy, which gains visibility and funding; Nigeria’s edtech ecosystem, which gains recognition; and the 17,000 learners who have already been trained. The losers: the startups that did not win, and the millions of Nigerian youth who still lack access to digital skills training.
Bottom Line: A Lagos-based startup just beat 1,429 others to win a pan-African prize. That is not luck. That is proof that Nigeria’s edtech ecosystem is maturing.