After 10 editions of championing entrepreneurship beyond Nigeria’s traditional innovation hubs, #StartupSouth is taking its flagship conference in a new direction, unveiling OffChart NXT as a broader platform for discovering founders, businesses and opportunities emerging across Africa.
The inaugural OffChart NXT 2026, scheduled for October 22–23 in Port Harcourt, will be held under the theme, “Growth Doesn’t Follow Maps.”
The rebrand represents more than a change of name. It signals an expanded ambition by #StartupSouth to challenge the conventional geography of Africa’s startup ecosystem by connecting entrepreneurs with capital, technology, industry and markets regardless of where they are based.
For a decade, the #StartupSouth Conference has served as a meeting point for founders, investors, technology professionals, policymakers, businesses and ecosystem leaders, with a strong focus on Southern Nigeria.
According to the organisers, the decision to introduce OffChart NXT reflects the evolution of that ecosystem and the need for a platform capable of telling a broader African entrepreneurship story.
“For the past decade, #StartupSouth has worked from a simple conviction: geography should not determine how far ambition can travel,” said Uche Aniche, Convener of OffChart NXT and Founder of #StartupSouth.
“After ten editions, we felt the conference needed an identity that could carry the larger conversation we are now convening about people, markets and opportunities emerging across a wider map of African economies.”
While the flagship conference takes on a new identity, #StartupSouth will remain the organisation and movement behind OffChart NXT, preserving the network and community built over the past decade.
A key attraction of the inaugural edition will be the Startup Challenge & DealRoom, which comes with a ₦30 million prize pool for emerging founders.
Rather than functioning solely as a conventional pitch contest, the initiative will take selected startups through a structured venture-readiness process designed to assess and strengthen areas including business traction, market opportunity and capital readiness.
Participants will subsequently proceed through further evaluation, community voting and the final competition and DealRoom, where high-potential businesses will have an opportunity to engage with investors and other stakeholders.
Ani Oko, a UK-based technology professional, member of the OffChart NXT Council and lead of the Startup Challenge & DealRoom Work Group, said the initiative is intended to create lasting value for participating founders beyond the cash prize.
“The ₦30 million is important, but the real opportunity is to build a process that leaves founders stronger than we met them,” Oko said.
“We want to identify credible businesses, help founders sharpen how they think about traction, markets and capital, and put the strongest of them in front of people who can materially move their companies forward.”
The decision to stage the first OffChart NXT in Port Harcourt is also central to the conference’s message.
As one of Nigeria’s major commercial and industrial centres, Port Harcourt offers a practical backdrop for a platform seeking to demonstrate that high-growth businesses and innovation do not have to originate from the country’s better-known startup centres.
For Tomi Davies (TD), investor and technology entrepreneur, the shift recognises the breadth of entrepreneurial potential across the continent.
“Great businesses don’t only come from places where capital already gathers. Across Africa, ambitious founders are building real businesses, solving real problems and creating jobs far beyond the established startup hubs,” he said.
Through OffChart NXT, #StartupSouth is therefore seeking to broaden the lens through which Africa’s innovation economy is viewed—moving beyond established startup centres to identify founders, markets and opportunities that conventional ecosystem maps may overlook.
The conference is expected to bring together entrepreneurs, investors, technology leaders, industry players, policymakers and ecosystem builders around the central question of how businesses can scale when opportunity is no longer confined by geography.