Heritiaina Randriamananatahina, 22 year old agriculture entrepreneur from Madagascar, is this year’s winner of the $25,000 Anzisha Grand Prize in the sixth annual edition of Africa’s premier award for youth entrepreneurship.
Heritiaina is the founder of Fiombonana, an agro-processing enterprise that manufactures dairy products and confectioneries using only Malagasy raw materials, employing farmers and providing local job opportunities. Heritiaina was selected from a competitive pool of diverse entrepreneurs from all over Africa.
He is the first from Madagascar to win the competition.
Last year, Nigeria’s Slatecube which offers a job-relevant skills learning platform and job placement services has been named the winner of the Anzisha Prize, taking home $25,000 Grand Prize in the 5th year of Africa’s premier award for youth entrepreneurship.
The first runner-up was environmental entrepreneur Yaye Souadou Fall, 21, from Senegal (who will receive $15,000) while agricultural entrepreneur N’guessan Koffi Jacques Olivier, 19, from Cote d’Ivoire was the second runner-up (and will receive $12,500).
“I am so excited to win the Anzisha Prize for 2016, even though I had to drop out of school when I was in grade six. My hard work in my business is paying off. I appreciate the training I have already received so far. Now that I have won, I will invest in my own education and grow my business,” said Heritiaina.
Souadou from Senegal and founder of E-cover, uses discarded tyres that are available in her home city, Dakar, into multi-purpose tiles for paving playgrounds, pavements, roads, and other surfaces while Jacques Olivier from Cote d’ Ivoire founded Yaletite Entrepreneurship Group CI, an agricultural group with the aim of producing and selling chocolate and food crops for profit and mobilizing youth for agricultural employment. It is unique for the manner in which Koffi operates his farm, through modern methods to ensure maximum yields during processing.
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The Anzisha Prize is a partnership between African Leadership Academy and The MasterCard Foundation. The 12 Anzisha Prize finalists were hand-picked from an applicant pool of 550 entrepreneurs from 32 African countries. Applications for the next cycle of the Anzisha Prize will open on 15 February in 2017. Nominations for promising youth entrepreneurs are welcome all year round.
