Agriculture in Africa employs the bulk of the population. Farmers have been having it hard trying to integrate technology in their processes.
The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has organized for regional hubs to conduct competitions to come up with innovations that can be incorporated in Agriculture.
Over 30 regional hubs had applied to be part of the AgriHack competition and they were narrowed down to 9 hubs which will conduct their own mini-hacks before sending the top two finalist to the regional finals.
The selected labs are: kLab from Rwanda; KINU and Buni Hub from Tanzania; Ice Addis from Ethiopia; Hive Colab and Outbox from Uganda; C4DLab (Computing for Development Lab) and iBizAfrica in Kenya; and Habaka Madagascar Innovation Hub from Madagascar.
The labs were chosen due to some qualification they possessed. According to the organizers of the competition, m:Lab East Africa, the hubs possessed:
- Profile of the institution and the existence of a form of business incubation program;
- Existence of an entrepreneur/developer community;
- Existence of a business coach or advisor to provide mentorship and/or coaching
- Ability to organize one selection event/hackathon to nominate a team to the finals;
- Existence of a physical space to host winning national teams for incubation/coaching throughout the post competition incubation period
The competition which is being organized in the backdrop of ICT4Ag conference to be held in Kigali, Rwanda from November 4 to 8 this year, will see winners receive seed money to push their ideas.
The winners will receive EUR 5,000, EUR 4,000 and EUR 3,000 for the first, second and third overall positions respectively.
