">
TechMoran
  • About Us
  • Deals
  • Jobs
  • Motoring
    • Money
  • Pitch Your Startup
  • Submit Your Post
  • Freelance Gigs
  • Travel
  • Men’s Corner
  • Dating
Monday, January 18, 2021
  • Startups
  • Reviews
  • Insider
    • Obituaries
  • Business
  • Women
  • Blockchain
  • Columnists
  • Hacks & Facts
    • How To
  • Editions
    • US Edition
    • India Edition
    • MENA Edition
    • Asia Edition
    • Europe Edition
    • International Edition
No Result
View All Result
TechMoran
">
Home Startups

Six East African startup entrepreneurs receive $120,00 from MIT D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellowships program

Milcah Lukhanyu by Milcah Lukhanyu
2 years ago
in Startups
13 min read
0

Six East African startup entrepreneurs selected from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda will receive $20,00 each from MIT D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellowships program.

The one-year MIT D-Lab Scale-Ups fellowship program supports social entrepreneurs to bring poverty-alleviating products to market at scale. The program aims to help the entrepreneurs to reduce risk and position their ventures for investment, partnership, and growth.

“We are excited to work with a vibrant cohort of East African entrepreneurs whose expertise is grounded in their lived reality,” says Jona Repishti, who manages the fellowship. “Working with local founders has certain advantages — they reflect the demographics of the markets they serve; their lived experience helps them identify unique, scalable, market-based solutions overlooked by outsiders. What’s more, they are more likely to commit for the long haul, developing local talent and infrastructure along the way.”

“As individuals and as a cohort, these fellows have great change potential for their regional ecosystems,” Repishti notes. “And by bringing them into D-Lab and the broader MIT community, we hope to advance not only their ventures, but also the D-Lab and MIT approach to social entrepreneurship.”

Launched in 2012, the D-Lab Scale-Ups fellowship has supported 39 fellows working on four continents in sectors including agriculture, energy, water, health care, housing, mobility, recycling, education, and personal finance. At the close of last year’s cycle, Scale-Ups fellows had raised $11.1 million in funding, generated $10.2 million in revenue, created over 700 direct and 6,700 indirect full-time equivalent jobs, and reached 1.5 million people living in low-income settings with their product and service offerings.

“Over the course of the 12-month fellowship we tackle the knowledge gap by putting fellows in the driver’s seat,” Repishti explains. “Our entrepreneurs guide us to provide support that is tailored to address their pain points, delivered fast, and focused on the essentials. Our curriculum is experiential, dynamic, and focused on transforming mindsets, just capabilities.”

READ  Glovo expands to Kitengela and Nakuru to grow its local footprint

This year’s D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellows are:

Related posts

Adam Molai’s JUA Kickstarter Fund Doubles to $2M to Kickstart African Entrepreneurship

January 15, 2021
0

Nigeria’s TeamApt pivots to serve consumers, eyes expansion into West & North Africa

January 14, 2021
0

Cellulant Group CEO Ken Njoroge to step down in June

January 14, 2021
0
work from home kenya

OZÉ Raises $700k To Digitize African MSMEs & Offer Them Affordable Capital

January 14, 2021
0

Winnie Gitau (Kenya)

Winnie Gitau is founder of Kwangu Kwako, which provides safer, healthier, and more secure housing alternatives to the traditional informal settlement structures in Kenya. To do this, they use reinforced pre-cast concrete panels made by local artisans within the community. The outcome is a safer, simpler and more cost-effective alternative to the existing Mabati structures, which are temporary homes built from corrugated iron sheets and bush poles.

This summer, as part of her fellowship, she says she will have the opportunity to work with a D-Lab monitoring and evaluation fellow to figure out “little measurable ways to gauge” the human impact of Kwangu Kwako’s work, in other words: “how to best measure our impact besides the number of houses or units sold.”

Dysmus Kisilu (Kenya)

Dysmus Kisilu, winner of a 2018 Gates Foundation Goalkeeper Award, is the founder of Solar Freeze, a Kenya-based enterprise that has pioneered mobile cold storage units powered by renewable energy to help rural smallholder farmers reduce postharvest loss. In many developing countries, postharvest losses are as high as 80% and the cold‐storage chain is virtually non‐existent due to high equipment costs and spotty electricity. Solar Freeze has provided solar-powered irrigation kits and cold storage devices to more than 3,000 farmers.

READ  Transfast targets the Nigerian market with free Uber rides

Christian Mwilage (Tanzania)

“I expect to gain connections, partnerships, knowledge sharing, and training that will help us strengthen and scale our project,” says Christian Mwijage, the founder of EcoAct Tanzania. EocAct is a for‐profit social enterprise that has developed a chemical-free and energy-conserving technology which transforms post-consumer waste plastics into durable plastic timbers for use in construction. EcoAct plastic timber is an affordable alternative to traditional timber, reduces the need for building material manufactured from wood, and helps to preserve forests and mitigate climate change.

Peter Mumo Nyamai (Kenya)

Peter Mumo Nyamai is the founder of Expressions Global Group, a social venture which supplies innovative, durable, and environment-friendly rainwater harvesting products to improve irrigation and boost productivity among rural smallholder farmers in Kenya. In addition to its product line, Expressions Global links farmers to the affordable credit and ready markets for fresh produce. “We are at a point of growth where we needed help in fine-tuning key segments of our venture,” Nyamai says, “and the MIT D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellowship offers not only a cocktail of everything we needed, but a chance to be part of community driven by a shared purpose: to make a better world through education, research, and innovation.”

Chrispinus Onyancha (Uganda)

“Winning this fellowship is a big confirmation,” says Chrispinus Onyancha, CEO of clinicPesa, a platform established to provide access to health care financing to individuals in East Africa to offset medical bills and buy medications at any clinicPesa-registered clinic, hospital, or pharmacy. “We strongly believe that creative health care financing should be among key priority focus areas, especially for marginalized groups in Africa where infant mortality rates are so high and over 20 million people per year till die of preventable and treatable conditions such as malaria.”

READ  CEO Weekends: Ady.ng Launches Heavy Presence on Pulse.ng to Give Readers Saving Tips

Prince Prosper Tillya (Tanzania)

Prince Prosper Tyllya is the founder and managing director of FixChap, a digital platform in Tanzania through which clients can book repair requests and get connected instantly to verified local handymen, sourced from vocational training institutions. “Winning the fellowship is an incredible milestone for us,” Tillya says. “I hope the fellowship will take our venture to a whole new level on every aspect which will enables us to increase our impact and touch more lives.” FixChap benefits clients such as homeowners and businesses by providing reliable and competent services while providing a stable income to the handymen

Readers 2,981

Share

  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Milcah Lukhanyu

Milcah Lukhanyu

Milcah Lukhanyu covers daily news briefs at TechMoran. She is the person who will probably read your press release and get the story out of it or totally trash it. Send tips to [email protected]

Related Posts

Entrepreneurship

Adam Molai’s JUA Kickstarter Fund Doubles to $2M to Kickstart African Entrepreneurship

January 15, 2021
0
Startups

Nigeria’s TeamApt pivots to serve consumers, eyes expansion into West & North Africa

January 14, 2021
0
Business

Cellulant Group CEO Ken Njoroge to step down in June

January 14, 2021
0
work from home kenya
Startups

OZÉ Raises $700k To Digitize African MSMEs & Offer Them Affordable Capital

January 14, 2021
0
Startups

France’s OTT platform Molotov expands into 7 African countries

January 14, 2021
0
Startups

Gro Intelligence Raises $85 Million in Series B Funding

January 13, 2021
0
alternative energy building clouds energy
Startups

West Africa’s Daystar Power raises $38 million to accelerate its regional expansion

January 13, 2021
0
Startups

UK & Egypt’s Docspert Health Raises Six-Figure Seed to expand its Telemedicine Platform

January 13, 2021
0

https://bit.ly/2VOxuoBhttps://bit.ly/2VOxuoBhttps://bit.ly/2VOxuoB
ADVERTISEMENT

Join our Mailing List

Loading

Recent Posts

A salesman checks a customer's iPhone at a mobile phone store in New Delhi, India, July 27, 2016. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

How To Measure How Much You Walk On Your iPhone

January 17, 2021

How To Scan and Sign Documents Directly From Your iPhone

January 17, 2021

realme to release more phones in 2021 to grow its smartphone market share

January 16, 2021

What You Need To Know To Manage Your Network Effectively

January 16, 2021

Baidu establishes an Intelligent electric vehicle arm to bring autonomous cars on a road near you

January 15, 2021
">
">

Follow Us

">

There are many sites out there focused on blowing off some steam, from funny entertainment to thrilling experiences like playing online, in some cases online gaming could grant you the chance to win extra money. We came across rocketpot.io while browsing for a good btc casino online and it left us a very good impression with their wide variety of games and crypto offering.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

© 2019 Moran Media Group - All rights reserved TechMoran.

No Result
View All Result
  • Startups
  • Reviews
  • Insider
    • Obituaries
  • Business
  • Women
  • Blockchain
  • Columnists
  • Hacks & Facts
    • How To
  • Editions
    • US Edition
    • India Edition
    • MENA Edition
    • Asia Edition
    • Europe Edition
    • International Edition

© 2019 Moran Media Group - All rights reserved TechMoran.

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.
%d bloggers like this: