The Africa Startup Summit, which took place on 14 and 15 February in Kigali, Rwanda, provides a platform for entrepreneurs across the continent to showcase their innovations and pitch in front of an audience of more than 400 investors, accelerators, corporates and media.
This event, held in partnership with Disrupt Africa, a “one-stop shop for all news, information, and commentary pertaining to the continent’s tech startup – and investment – ecosystem” hopes to help entrepreneurs develop their ideas into workable solutions for the real world.
Tom Jackson, co-founder of Disrupt Africa, describes the Africa Startup Summit as a valuable opportunity to startups looking for investment to take their offerings to the next level.
“Taking top African startups and giving them the chance to showcase their products and services on stage is a big part of what Africa Startup Summit is about. All of these companies will arrive in Kigali looking for ways to scale their businesses, and we will do all we can to help them succeed,” said Jackson.
After receiving more than 100 applications, 10 startups from 7 African countries were chosen to take part in the summit.
Gabriella Mulligan, also a co-founder of Disrupt Africa, says that choosing the 10 stratups that took part was not easy.
“We were delighted by both the quality and quantity of applications to Pitch Live at the Africa Startup Summit, and picking the final 10 was not an easy job. However, we are confident the businesses we have selected to take part are a strong representation of the high levels of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit within the African tech space and look forward to showcasing them to potential partners and investors at the event,” said Mulligan.
The chosen entrepreneurs have developed products across a range of industries, including e-health, agri-tech, mobility and fintech.
- 7keema (Egypt): an on-demand home nursing services platform using mobile, AI, VR and telehealth technologies to ensure peace of mind for patients and higher incomes for nurses;
- Appy Saude (Angola): the largest digital health portal of Angola, allowing users to identify and book healthcare service providers;
- Complete Farmer (Ghana): a crowd-farming platform that enables users to own agricultural land and manage it remotely from their devices;
- DéMars (Mauritius): a next-generation mobile phone payments network for small micropayments built using the latest blockchain technology;
- Exuus (Rwanda): leverages the power of collective saving and adequate credit scoring model to achieve financial inclusion;
- Jetstream Africa (Ghana): a data-driven supply chain platform that enables food companies to buy agricultural products directly from African smallholder farmers and processors;
- Leaf (Rwanda): provides financial services to the stateless and excluded by creating a virtual bank with blockchain technology;
- Moja Ride (Ivory Coast): a Mobility-as-a-Service platform integrating local payment solutions and modes of transportation to help users find, book and pay for transport in their city;
- OZÉ (Ghana): a mobile platform that empowers small business owners to make data-driven decisions to improve their performance and access capital;
- RideSafe (Kenya): an emergency response service that utilizes a micro-insurance financing model running on a decentralized blockchain application.