Deadline: October 31, 2025
Applications are open for the Job Alliance Cross Border Jobs Startup Competition 2025. The competition aims to identify and support bold startups shaping the future of labour mobility for Africans. This competition seeks to source bold ideas, spotlight existing solutions, and build momentum for safer, fairer, and scalable pathways for the African continent to move across borders.
If you’re building a platform or service that helps African talent move, connect, and thrive across borders, they want to hear from you.
They are seeking startups that:
- Facilitate worker mobility across African or global borders, through recruitment, placement and/or service management
- Offer enabling services focused on the needs of migrants such as finance, language training, compliance, housing, or recruitment
- Expand existing jobtech solutions into the labour mobility space
Prizes
The top 3 startups win:
- Grants worth $10k each
- Access to the Jobtech Alliance’s tech perks worth up to $200,000 per company (including AWS credits and more)
- Mentorship + community access through Jobtech Alliance, LaMP, IOM, and partners
- Eligibility for follow-on support for startups showing strong traction
Eligibility
Eligible startups must satisfy all the following conditions:
- Offer cross-border labour mobility solutions for Africans, between Africa and globally and across African borders.
- Have a registered business.
- Though the business can be at any stage (including idea/MVP stage), some evidence of traction is preferred.
- Adhere to principles relating to responsible and professional labor migration.
Judging Criteria
Applicants will be judged based on:
- Impact potential. This includes both potential scale, and depth of impact (ie. platforms creating jobs preferred, those targeting more vulnerable populations, etc)
- Business Model Viability. This includes evidence of traction and/or viability of the solution.
- Innovation. This considers the platform’s approach to respond to the sector’s challenges.
Application
For more information, visit Cross Border Jobs Startup Competition.
