Orange Africa and Middle East Social Entrepreneur Prize (POESAM) has added two new prizes to this year’s edition: The International Women’s Prize with a value of €20,000, supported by the Orange Group Diversity and Inclusion unit and the Special 10th Anniversary Prize with a value of €10,000.

In addition, a project was also awarded the special, “Jury’s Favourite” prize.

So, a total of six prizes were awarded by the POESAM International Grand Prix jury. 18 finalists were selected to enter the international competition which took place at the AfricaTech Festival, the biggest technology fair in Africa.

For the International Grand Prix, the 3 winners were:

1^st prize: Tunisia’s Ahkili, an innovative psychological assistance telephone hotline covering the whole of North Africa, available seven days a week to facilitate contact with qualified psychologists without having to make an appointment.

2^nd prize: Mali’s Teliman, the first Malian on-demand motorbike taxi service in Bamako.

3^rd prize: Liberia’s Weeglo, a project offering an online learning solution specific to the Liberian education system.

For the International Women’s Prize, the winning project was Tunisia’s Ahmini, a digital platform to facilitate access for rural women to the Tunisian welfare and healthcare system.

For the Special 10^th Anniversary Prize, the winner was Burkina Faso’s Toto Riibô, a Burkinabé service for ordering and delivery of meals cooked by women stallholders in the streets of Ouagadougou.

This year, one particular project caught the eye of the international jury, who decided to award it the Jury’s Favourite Prize. The winner was Burkina Faso’s SOBATIC, an organisation that provides training and also designs IT tools for people with impaired vision.

Since 2011, the prizes awarded have been in recognition of innovative projects and start-ups associated with the use of mobile phones that have an impact on society, by improving the quality of life of people in Africa and the Middle East in the fields of education, healthcare, agriculture, or mobile payment, e-commerce or even sustainable development.

Since its creation, more than 30 international prizewinners have shared a total of €500,000 and 75 people have benefited from 6 months of coaching and mentoring offered by Orange and its partners.

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