TIFAT a farm technology that connects farmers to a buyer’s marketplace emerged the winner of the DEMO Africa Uganda Innovation Tour. Tifat beat a field of more than 15 other startups from Uganda in a two-round contest at the Hive Collab in Kampala.

30 start-ups participated and they all came geared up to pitch their products and services in front of a panel of three judges – Dustyn Winder from Prehype VC, Patrick Ngolube from Hive Collab and Kenneth Legesi from the Kampala Angel Investors Network (KAIN).

“Every year we get very talented teams pitching their products and services, and the Ugandan turn up has amicably proved how the Ugandan Innovation and Entrepreneurship ecosystem is maturing and entrepreneurs are coming up with innovative ways to tackle everyday challenges,” remarked Harry Hare of DEMO Africa.

“TIFAT has been providing post-harvest loss reduction knowledge and creating market opportunities for thousands in Uganda. We support the beneficiaries of our technology with real time and forecasted market information to both farmers and buyers for informed decision making and planning,” commented Francis Nsanga. The other five start-ups finalists teams included Yunga, 2ambale, Yakako Pay, Airtime Ninja and My saving.

TIFAT team will proceed to battle it off with the winners of Kenya and Rwanda innovation tours where DEMO Africa and the panel judges will select a regional representative for East Africa  launch event to be held in Morocco on 18 and 19 October. The successful startups in each region will automatically qualify to be part of the pool of 30 where the successful Startups will be provided with resources worth over US$150,000 including US$120,000 software tools from Microsoft and USD$15 000 from AWS that to help them build and grow their businesses.

Application for selection to the 2018 DEMO Africa cohort close on 15th July. Application is done online on the DEMOAfrica site at www.demo-africa.com