Growth Africa’s Continental Renewable Energy which recently graduated from Growth Africa’s Innovation to Impact accelerator programmeco-founded by Dr. Oscar Aghan and Torooti Mwirigi has won the Sankalp Africa Awards.
The social enterprise manufactures composite roofing tiles and fencing posts from recycled plastic waste using patented processes, emerged as the overall winner of Sankalp Africa Awards 2014.
“We’re proud of our commitment to incubate early stage companies and accelerate impact businesses through our programs to reach critical mass. With this recognition, it looks like you’ll be seeing a lot more of our graduates doing great things in the near future and achieving great milestones and scaling their impact” Patricia Jumi the MD at The Growth Hub.
The company provides competitively priced high quality products for development of affordable housing units which also goes a long way in conserving the environment, create 45 direct jobs in the slum and is an indirect source of livelihood for street families and communities adjacent the Kariobangi dumpsite and their factory.
Sankalp Africa Awards were characterized by a mixture of burgeoning success stories of social enterprises with proven business cases and promising social enterprises with scalable solutions that address huge challenges at the bottom of the pyramid.
Sankalp Forum organized by Intellecap launched its inaugural edition of the Africa Awards in 2013 to support emerging high-impact African SMEs through a rigorous program that sources scalable businesses across six impact sectors; and showcases them to leading investors. In the run up to Sankalp Awards for Africa there were 100+ applications from 12 countries, 12 finalists representing six countries and finally 1 winner, two runners up and one people’s choice awards.
Other Winners include First Runners Up: Kaburu Muguika; Prosoya [Kenya], Second Runners Up: DR. Moka Lantum, Micro Clinic Technologies [Kenya] and Peoples’ Choice Award: Nezerwa Francois, Dassy Enterprises [Rwanda]
Takamoto biogas another Growth Hub I2I 2013 graduate was also awarded a certificate of special recognition at Sankalp Awards. So far they have installed 105 biogas systems central Kenya in their pilot. Their inverted Pay as You Go model where farmers pay a small fee [10,000 shillings] to install the biogas system and then pay for the gas as they use is gaining traction in Kenya since the company supplies, installs and maintains the biogas systems.