Erick Yong

A Frankfurt-based French-Cameroonian entrepreneur helping African start-ups find investors.

Born in Cameroon in 1975, Erick Yong, the son of a diplomat, spent his childhood in Bonn ( then capital of West Germany) and his teenage years in Ethiopia, the home of pan-Africanism. “It opened me up to other cultures and other perceptions”, he explains. This multilingual entrepreneur, with an excellent network in Africa and Europe, devotes his life to helping “small companies on the continent, which represent 80% of businesses and the biggest source of employment, but which are unable to raise finance”, due to investors often overestimating the risks when it comes to investing their money in small African companies. So, in 2015, Erick Yong co-founded GreenTec Capital Partners in Frankfurt with his German partner Thomas Festerling, a former director of Deutsche Bank, with the aim of supporting start-ups as they pass through ‘the valley of death’, that perilous phase when a young company fresh out of the incubator has to find its business model if it is to survive. For example, GreenTec puts them in touch with senior people who have a wealth of experience and are keen to share it with young entrepreneurs. With a decade of experience in helping dozens of start-ups get their foot in the door, the group co-founded Zeitec Investment Office (ZIO) in 2022 with Nigeria's TVC Lab to identify investment opportunities in African tech start-ups and make them more accessible to Western partners.