Village Capital, a Washington D.C. based international non-profit venture-lending fund, has partnered with, Gearbox, a Nairobi-based hackerspace for hardware entrepreneurs and experimenters, to create a hardware accelerator focusing on tech startups in Africa.

The hardware accelerator will use Village Capital’s model of letting peers select the two best startups out of 12 participants, after a rigorous mentorship and evaluation program, to equally share a $100,000 reward at the end of five months.

“When Africa can build a local manufacturing infrastructure, the economy can really take off. We’re excited to be backing the entrepreneurs who are driving this change,” Ross Baird, executive director of Village Capital, said in an email to AFKInsider.

The fund said it was “especially interested in companies seeking to improve access to energy for all or provide increased agricultural productivity for small-holder farmers.”

It said the accelerator program will consist of three intensive four-day sessions between October this year and February 2016. The sessions will be held at the iHub in Nairobi, Kenya.