Orange announced the three winners of the Orange African Social Venture Prize during the AfricaCom Awards ceremony held in Cape Town giving three winners Euros 25,000 each plus a patent application for the winner.
Orange also introduced a special Orange Partner award to specifically reward a project using an Orange API while the 10 finalists will benefit from support by experts through an online acceleration program offered by Orange on the VC4Africa platform.
More than 450 candidates submitted their projects spanning fields such as healthcare, agriculture, education, energy, industry and commerce from which the panel of judges, consisting of Orange specialists, the media and development institutions chose three prize winners and an Orange Partner prize winner from among 11 nominated projects that were presented on Orange’s pan-African web portal, www.starafrica.com.
The winning projects are:
1: Modisar, a livestock farm management desktop, web and mobile app that makes it easy for farmers to manage their farms. The application is designed to stimulate development of the livestock industry in Botswana and cultivate interest in livestock farming among younger generations by associating modern technologies with the nation’s passion for farming.
2: The Station Energy Ivoire; aims to set-up several franchise stores in rural or urban areas of Côte d’Ivoire, is based on an innovative retail concept for energy services. Inspired the models used by both service stations and grocery shops in Africa, Station Energy is a solution that provides wide-spread and affordable access to energy. The shops are equipped with photovoltaic panels to provide a range of shared services (batteries allowing access to lighting, cold spaces, Internet access, sale of low consumption equipment, etc.).
3: Bouquet Pass Santé: an online platform that enables people living abroad or in Senegal to pay directly for medical consultations for themselves or family members.
The online voters favourite project” was “Pubcell” a conceptthat offer advertisers the ability to promote their brands to mobile phone users by paying advertising fees for the rental of their private spaces while the special Orange Partner API prize was awarded to Mewanko Farm, a project that involves the creation of an online platform to enable the sale of agricultural products on both urban and international markets.
The 10 finalists will join the coaching program hosted by VC4Africa.
“Entrepreneurs in Africa have always shown an ability to harness technology for the development of lasting, socially-responsible innovations that stimulate growth. Through this prize, Orange is proud to be able to contribute to this dynamic, particularly by providing active support to the prize-winners,” said Marc Rennard, Orange’s Senior Executive Vice President for Africa, the Middle East and Asia. “This year’s jury was impressed by the overall quality of the projects submitted. We can clearly see that technology is a relevant tool for driving social development, and this gives us an added stimulus in our commitment to Africa.”