African startups comprise 23 of the 26 finalists of the Pitch AgriHack competition, winners of which will take home cash funding and additional support.
Pitch AgriHack is run by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), in partnership with the African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRA), Women in Tech Africa, Nigeria’s Wennovation Hub and Suguba Africa.
The theme of this year’s edition is “Women entrepreneurs innovate for agricultural transformation in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific”, and 325 applications were received. Judges have now selected 26 finalists, with 23 African startups joined by three from the Caribbean.
Nigeria is best represented with six finalists, followed by Kenya and Benin with five and four representatives respectively. In line with the theme, more than half of the companies are led by women founders or co-founders.
In the advanced platform category, the selected companies are Lawyers 4 Farmers (Uganda), Archeos (Benin), Savanna Circuit (Kenya), Solar Freeze (Kenya), AgroInfoTech Africa (Nigeria), Daily Fresh Farms (Nigeria), GO (Rwanda) Agro Innova (Ghana), CLIN SARLU (Togo), UjuziKilimo (Kenya), PREMIUM HORTUS (Benin), CowTribe (Ghana), and Ankora Global Services (Nigeria).
The early stage platform category is comprised of Crop2Cash (Nigeria), Develop Digitally (Jamaica), Illuminum Greenhouses (Kenya), ZuriCap, (Kenya), Agrisolve (Ghana), Agro VCM Solutions (Jamaica), Codettes (Suriname), JINUKUN (Benin), Farmignite (Nigeria), FENOU PACKAGING (Benin), Kitovu (Nigeria), AGRISOFT (Togo), and AKABOXI (Uganda).
Finalists will take part in a bootcamp and pitching sessions in Kigali, Rwanda, in September at the 2018 African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), 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, with up to nine startups to receive cashs prize of up to EUR15,000 (US$17,500), and benefit from promotional support, additional capacity building and networking opportunities.
