On August 29th,  during Seedstars Abidjan, Etudesk was declared winner in the Côte d’Ivoire round of Seedstars World and will represent the country at the Seedstars Summit in Switzerland to compete for up to USD 1 million in equity investment.

Etudesk, is a web platform permitting academic institutions to set up their e-learning platform easily and was founded by Lamine Barro who says him and his team are passionate about improving education not only in the country, but in Africa.

“We really think that education has the power to improve people’s lives and why not start with the institutions first?,” explains Barro.

Apart from participating at Seedstars Summit, taking place in Switzerland in April 2017, Etudesk stands a chance to also win the TRECC – “Transforming Education in Cocoa Communities” prize, an Abidjan-based coalition of public and private stakeholders focused on improving the quality of education in Côte d’Ivoire. TRECC is also the initiator and sponsor of the Transforming Education Prize, which is a 50k USD prize to be awarded through Seedstars World’s global competitions to the best startup in the education space with the goal to enhance education for communities in rural areas.

The event was organized with the support of local ambassador Rites Massamba, Founder and CEO of IFID.

1st runner up is Aphelion Energy, a platform that delivers, installs and modernises solar energy solutions in rural areas.  COLIBA, an early stage waste management online mobile application, which seeks to help users separate their waste, grabbed the last spot in the top 3. The other startups invited to pitch were Mon artisan, FORTITUDE, Kalejob, DJAZI,  Traffety, SimPay and Syca SAS.

The 10 startups pitched in front of a prestigious jury, including Pierre-Alain Masson, Co-founder of Seedstars, Habib Bamba, Director at Deloitte, Kevin Constant, Country Manager at The Gambia Brussels Airlines, Benjamin Onuoha, Managing Director at Africa 2.0, Elizabeth West, Associate Impact Finance at TRECC and Anaïs Ligibel Director of Open Innovation at  Orange.

Seedstars Abidjan also featured speaker Mr Cuenat of the Swiss Embassy,  Francis Yapobi, Founder  of Airshop, Idriss Ndaho, Group Project Manager at Orange Technocentre, Penda Diop Cissé, CEO at the Beezy Africa Group and Sabina Vigani, Country Director at Jacobs Foundation who represented TRECC in her theme of talk and how the project is improving education in rural areas.