Founders are extraordinarily busy, even for their own investors. A decade ago, they might have had relationships with a handful of VC partners as they scaled their businesses and raised additional rounds of capital.

Because many of the world's most successful tech companies were conceived by college students, recent graduates or dropouts, VCs and their limited partners have long tried to find a way to tap into that youthful creativity as early as possible.

It started as First Round Capital’s experiment. After all, founder Josh Kopelman had started his first company, Infonautics, while he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Partner Hayley Barna had started Birchbox while still at Harvard Business School.

If you are an African graduate, professional and entrepreneur trying to get into venture capital, here are five African VC fellowships you should consider joining.

It takes a village to grow a startup, so Village Global is offering access to a deep network of top tech execs to lure founders to its seed fund. Today, Village Global announced it’s raised $100 million for that fund that was first unveiled in September.

Sequoia Capital has funneled millions of dollars to scores of well-connected entrepreneurs and academics, who invest and look for ideas.

Sifted found nine such programmes founded in Europe. They range from a few days to a few weeks, from free to thousands of euros.