Support student projects
A student who arrives with a business idea finds structured support to turn it into a viable activity, without waiting until the end of their studies.
The KIAMI Incubator
Where you learn to start a venture.
The Incubator is a teaching tool, reserved for KIAMI students, wherever in the DR Congo they come from. Starting from a real project, supported in a shared workspace, it develops entrepreneurial thinking and practice: starting a company is one possible outcome, not the only measure of success.
In practice
What the support entails.
Support is judged first by what it asks and by what it gives. Here are both, before any argument.
- Access to the institute's shared workspace.
- Structured support, from the diagnosis through to the launch of the venture.
- The backing of several mentors and experts, according to what the project needs.
- Access to the institute's network of partner companies.
KIAMI Incubator
Entry conditions
- Who can apply
- Students enrolled at KIAMI, whatever their specialisation
- Duration
- Six months, varying with the project
- Pace
- A progress review every fortnight, in line with the academic calendar and what students need
- Terms
- Free of charge and with no equity stake taken
Five roles, held at the same time.
The Incubator is neither a business nursery standing on its own nor a mere classroom exercise. Its value comes precisely from doing both at once.
Train through the real thing
The project is not a case study: it is the student's own business, with their money, their customers and their suppliers. A demanding way to teach, because decisions there have consequences.
Root the institute in its region
The country's support organisations are concentrated in Kinshasa. Every company born at the Incubator settles into an economic fabric no one is supporting, and prepares tomorrow's network of partner companies.
Become a crossroads of networks
Beyond its own students, the institute is building training and business ties with other schools, companies and incubators, in Kongo Central, across the DR Congo and internationally.
Connect to funders
Funding rarely comes from banks alone: private partners, investors and angel investors hold at least as large a place. The Incubator can help the student find their way through a complex path to financing their venture.
The course first, the incubator second.
An academic incubator does not begin at the incubator: it begins in the classroom. At KIAMI, no one reaches the Incubator without having already run a venture project of their own.
In the first year, for everyone
Entrepreneurial Project I, then Entrepreneurial Project II: two core-curriculum projects, carried out before the specialisation is even chosen. Every student builds their own — taking stock, exploring a real need, trying things out.
The aim is not to write a theoretical business plan, but to live the process through. There is no admission: this is everyone's path.
Then, at the Incubator
Open to every specialisation from the first year, in cohorts and part-time, outside the classroom. The point is no longer to learn the process but to carry a real project through to formal registration.
Admission is decided on the commitment of the person behind the project and the clarity of the need, more than on how far the project has come. Support continues after the company is created.
And the loop closes
Projects born in the first year feed the Incubator, and the first students supported will come back, once they have graduated, to mentor the cohorts that follow. That return is what is most often missing elsewhere, where the teaching side and the business side stay sealed off from each other.
The support programme.
A structured support programme, designed to give students as much time to think their project through as to build it: taking stock, testing an idea, learning to manage, to sell, to raise money. Six stages follow one another, from the first interview to the first years of trading, with two forms of continuous support: mentoring and short workshops. The skill acquired along the way counts as much as the venture itself.
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship means spotting a need that is poorly served and gathering the means to meet it: by starting your own company, by taking over the family business, or by turning round a struggling activity.
Social entrepreneurship follows the same process, aiming first at a collective effect: cooperatives, projects with an environmental or social purpose.
For a management student, that choice changes the stance: it is no longer only about administering what exists, but about bringing it into existence.
present at every stage
05
Mentoring
The Incubator makes several mentors and experts available. Each one steps in when the project needs them, on the aspect they know best: mentoring therefore takes several forms along the way.
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01
Ideation
Bringing the idea out and putting it to the test before committing time to it: starting from a need that is poorly served, setting out several options rather than one, taking them to potential customers, then keeping the one that holds up. You search wide before you choose.
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02
Diagnosis and business model
The project is laid out flat: who it is for, what problem it solves, how it makes money, and on what conditions it holds together.
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03
Prototyping and iteration
The project leaves the page: first product, first service delivered, first production run. You try, you correct, you start again, until the offer holds up in the hands of real customers.
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04
Financial structuring and funding
Costing the need, cash-flow plan, preparing the funding application and drawing up a funding strategy.
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07
Scaling up
The business model, the product or the service, already checked with a small number of customers, are now tested on a larger scale: quality, costs and organisation have to hold, not just the original idea.
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08
Commercialisation and growth
Setting a price that covers costs, widening the customer base, organising sales and distribution, then moving from an activity that runs to a company that grows (hiring, producing more, opening a second market).
registration · tax · cash flow · selling · digital
06
Short workshops
Practical sessions on formal registration, tax, cash-flow management, selling and digital management tools.
What comes out of it
Not every path ends in a trading company, and that is not the measure the Incubator uses. A project stopped along the way still leaves behind a tested way of working, a network built up, and the judgement needed to take up a project again on better ground.
The solutions developed sometimes serve other founders, and what has been learnt comes back to feed the cohorts that follow.
Coaches and angel investors
Supporting those who are starting out.
A student project needs two things the institute cannot provide on its own: the judgement of someone who has already run a company, and financial backing to get started. That is where you come in.
Support
Become an entrepreneurship coach
You run, or have run, a company, in the DR Congo or elsewhere. You follow one student throughout their time at the Incubator: you help them ask the right questions, you tell them what will not work, you open your address book to them.
- What it asks of you
- A regular progress review with your student, in person or remotely.
- Real experience of running a business; the size of the company matters little.
- Frankness: a project that does not hold up needs to hear so early.
- What you gain
- A fresh look at your own trade, which a beginner's questions force you to re-examine.
- A lasting relationship with future managers, ahead of everyone else.
Financial backing
Become a sponsor or angel investor
You have the means to give or to sponsor, and you want to put them to work for the Congolese economy. You back a student project born at the Incubator financially (sponsorship, donation or start-up advance) without taking an equity stake.
- What it asks of you
- Accepting that sponsorship is support, not an investment.
- Accepting the risk that the project you back fails, which is part of the exercise.
- Reviewing the files the Incubator puts to you, and choosing which ones to back.
- What you gain
- Access to projects already worked up: business model developed, costings checked, founder supported.
- A direct contribution to training young Congolese entrepreneurs.
Offer my support
The message opens ready-filled in your email program. If nothing happens, write directly to Infokiami.institut@gmail.com.
What students develop there.
The work is not about an object first of all, but about a business model: who the offer is for, what it costs, how it sells. The fields vary — a product, a service, a trading business — the method stays the same: set it out, take it to the field, learn.
Set it out
Several options, set down in black and white before choosing.
Take it to the field
The idea meets real customers, suppliers and prices.
Learn
What the field contradicts changes the model, until it holds.
Objectives
What the Incubator sets out to develop.
Producing companies is not the only measure of success. A project that does not succeed, but that teaches the person behind it to think and act as an entrepreneur, has done its job.
- Develop entrepreneurial thinking and practice in every student: spotting an opportunity, testing it against reality, learning from what does not work.
- Several outcomes are possible at the end of the programme: a trading company, a social enterprise project carried through, a student project taken to its conclusion without becoming a company, or the skills to support other founders in turn.
- Bring out, in the DR Congo and starting with Kongo Central, entrepreneurial and social projects that last, whether or not they lead to a company.
- Contribute to the formalisation of the local economy, by supporting the move from informal activity towards recognised structures, companies and social initiatives alike.
- Build up, project after project, the pool of future partners — companies and organisations — for experiential learning.
A dual model inside the institute.
The KIAMI model sends its students out into companies. The Incubator does the reverse: it brings the company inside the institute, at a stage when it does not yet exist.
What the student follows there is not theoretical learning but learning rooted in the entrepreneurial world, which builds real practice and makes it possible to grasp the different dimensions of a project of that scale. It is a demanding learning process, but one that can lead the student genuinely to create their company, or to launch a social project for the community.
Who can be supported
Students enrolled at KIAMI, from the first year onwards
Who provides the support
Teaching staff and entrepreneurs from the Incubator
Other ways to reach us.
You can also call, or come and see us on site. Companies wishing to join the Incubator will find the terms of the partnership on the page intended for them.
Telephone
+243 85 51 55 668
Address
Avenue KOLO n° 10
Mbanza-Ngungu, Kongo Central
Mbanza-Ngungu, Kongo Central
Frequently asked questions.
Who can be supported?
The Incubator is reserved for students enrolled at KIAMI. Every specialisation is concerned, not only the entrepreneurship stream: a business project can just as well come out of logistics, marketing or finance. For students on the Business Management, Entrepreneurship and Innovation specialisation, however, the Incubator is built into the programme.
Do you have to wait for a particular year to apply?
No. A project can be put forward from the first year. It will simply be supported at the pace that suits it: some spend months on the diagnosis before committing any expenditure at all.
Is there a charge for the support?
No. It is provided free of charge and without any equity stake in your company. It is part of what the institute gives its students.
How far advanced does a project have to be?
Applications are judged on the clarity of the need identified and on the student's commitment, more than on how far the project has come. A well-framed idea can be accepted where an advanced but vague project will not. These are academic projects, but not impersonal ones for the students: it is a demanding learning process, which can genuinely lead to real ventures.
Does the institute take any rights over my project?
No. Your project stays yours. The institute claims no equity, no rights over the idea and no exclusivity on what you develop.
What happens if the project never launches?
Giving up on the strength of a sound diagnosis is a result, not a failure. Support also serves to establish that a project does not hold up, before the student commits their savings or their family's.
Are you a student with a project of your own?
The Incubator starts with the management school. If you are joining the intake and already have a business idea in mind, put it forward now: it will be considered when you arrive.
Fields in which projects are expected
Food processing
Trade and distribution
Transport and logistics
Business services
Craft manufacturing
Construction and materials
Hospitality and catering
Digital services
This list reflects the Congolese economy. A project that does not appear on it can still be put forward.
Project received.
Thank you. The Incubator team is reviewing your submission and will get back to you at the address given.