The closure of Naspers Foundry and AlphaCode, two prominent accelerators in South Africa, has raised questions about the sustainability of accelerator programs in the country. While accelerators are an essential tool for entrepreneurs to gain access to resources such as tools, mentorship and support, the sustainability of startups and misaligned objectives between corporates and startups have contributed to the failures of such initiatives. Moreover, the lack of understanding by corporates on what defines success in a startup and the inability of the ecosystem to learn from past accelerator program failures have also been cited as reasons. To fix the accelerator model in South Africa, experts recommend that corporates collaborate with experts in startup development instead of running their accelerator programs themselves.

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