Ugandan startups Akaboxi – a digital financial inclusion system that enables smallholder farmers in a community to manage and monitor their savings together, and Lawyers 4 Farmers – a team of lawyers working with farmers to help them solve legal challenges they face, are among the 23 African startups that emerge finalists for the 2018 AgriHack Competition. 26 finalists were selected but the 23 were African finalists from Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Rwanda, and Benin. The rest were from Jamaica, and Suriname.
The Pitch AgriHack competition is run by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), in partnership with the African Development Bank (AfDB), African Green Revolution Forum (AGRA), Women in Tech Africa, Nigeria’s Wennovation Hub, and Suguba Africa.
With the competition being open to both male and female Founders and Co-founders of e-agri startups that are offering ICT services to the agricultural sector, this year’s competition was themed “Women entrepreneurs innovate for agricultural transformation in Africa,” and will see 50% of finalists be women.
Nigeria had the most representatives with 6 startups, followed by Kenya with 5 and Benin with 4. Uganda and Ghana had 2 representatives, while the rest of the countries had one representative.
The finalists were sorted in two categories; The Advanced Category, and The Early Stage Platform Category. Lawyers 4 Farmers came in the advanced category while Akaboxi was selected in the early stage platform category.
Finalists will take part in a bootcamp and pitching sessions in Kigali, Rwanda, at the African Green Revolution Forum that is scheduled to take place from 5th to 8th September, where they will benefit from capacity building and have the opportunity to pitch their solutions to development partners and potential investors.
Winners will be announced on the closing day of the event, where up to 9 startups will win cash prizes of up to EUR15,000 (roughly USD$17,529 or UGX66 million), and benefit from promotional support, additional capacity building and networking opportunities. This will be received from CTA, AfDB and other partners. The provided grant will help the winners to advance their services, apart from additional support that may be facilitated by stakeholders involved.[related-posts]
