The 10 African agritech startups that will participate in the 3rd cohort of the Africa4Future Accelerator Program 2020 have been announced.
Among the 10 selected startup for the Africa4Future Accelerator Program, 4 are from Nigeria while others are from Ghana, Morocco, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, and Tanzania.
The 1o startups were picked from 212 applications from 28 countries across Africa. They will have the opportunity to further develop their ideas in preparation for a virtual showcase in June. This year’s focus is on remote sensing for precision agriculture and infrastructure development.
These are in line with SDG 2 and SDG 9 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and startups in Africa were challenged to address in their Africa4Future application.
Over the next two months, the start-ups will have access to technical and commercial workshops—as well as mentorship opportunities with Airbus, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit German (GIZ), and CCHub experts and coaches—to push their ideas to the next level.
In June, the cohort will present their work to the Africa4Future executive committee during a virtual showcase.
“Our virtual showcase in June will be the perfect moment for start-ups to show what Africa can achieve with satellite technology and support,” says François Lombard, Director of Intelligence, Airbus Defence & Space.
Sean Wiid, UP42 Chief Product Officer, adds: “UP42 is proud to be supporting this initiative to boost innovation in Africa by providing the start-ups’ easy access to a wide range of Earth-observation data, analytics and infrastructure at scale.”
Introducing the 2020 #Africa4Future cohort
1.) Agrorite: This start-up from Nigeria is creating a funding and advisory services platform designed specifically for farmers.
2.) Crop2Cash: This start-up from Nigeria is working on a platform to connect smallholder farmers to banks, giving access to credit products and ensuring oversight for banks.
3.) Epinec: This IT services start-up from Nigeria is working on a project management tool to give farmers real-time visibility.
4.) RuralFarmers Hub: This start-up from Nigeria is developing a tool to provide farmers with agricultural best practices and tailored advice via SMS, voice calling, or in person.
5.) AgriEdge: This start-up from Morocco is developing a precision agriculture services platform to improve the profitability of small-holder farmers.
6.) DMM.HeHe: This start-up from Rwanda is developing an end-to-end logistics solution to connect farmers to customers.
7.) Fastagger: This start-up from Kenya is developing an AI-as-a-service platform to provide image annotation services to AI-driven businesses.
8.) Flamingoo Foods: This rice trading start-up from Kenya is creating a tool to predict food shortages and food surplus in the East Africa region.
9.) GrowForMe: This start-up from Ghana is working on a platform to connect smallholder farmers to investors and individuals to grow a specific crop.
10.) XY Analytics: This start-up from South Africa is working on a herd management tool to enable the monitoring of health, movement, reproductive status, and location of livestock.
Africa4Future is a joint-accelerator program launched by Airbus BizLab and “Make-IT in Africa,” an initiative developed by GIZ, the German agency for international cooperation.
It is implemented with the help of CCHub, a Nigerian start-up consultancy. In addition, UP42, a developer platform and marketplace for geospatial data and analytics, recently signed on as the program’s technology sponsor. Since 2017, #Africa4Future has accelerated 14 startups in Africa.
