I think there are three things that concern me and none of them is a lack of "ivy league" experience.
1) If you need a morale boost to complete your application then I don't think you are properly self motivated with your current idea/team to apply
2) If you believe that VC funded startups are a fun time, then I don't think you have the correct framing of the SV startup experience.
3) YC accepts only about 2% of applicants and of those they do accept only about 2% are from Africa. That already puts you potentially in a tough spot and while they accepted a good number of African applicants in 2023, the 2024 winter batch apparently had only 3.
I hope I am wrong and I wish you all the best of luck but my experience is that VC backed startups are very stressful particularly for the founders who now have to answer to disproportionally powerful board members who typically are looking for multiplicative not additive progress.
