Africa’s mobile phone carrier began a prize to give financial assistance to support entrepreneurs and start-ups offering solutions that use ICT to meet the needs of Africans. Orange announced three winners of the Orange African Social Venture Prize during the AfricaCom Awards ceremony.
Over 450 candidates responded to the call for projects, which ran from May to September, demonstrating the underlying entrepreneurial vitality that exists on the African continent. Proposed projects spanned a variety of fields such as healthcare, agriculture, education, energy, industry, and commerce.
The first prize winner was QuickDo, a start-up founded two years ago by a French Cameroonian entrepreneur. QuickDo provides readers in Cameroon with affordable access to digital books in addition to a complete ecosystem developed by the company and its partners. Ivoire Job project was the second prize winner, hoping to facilitate access to employment opportunities in Cote d’Ivoire through an online platform that is also compatible with mobile devices through an SMS system. And the third prize when to Tunisia’s Chifco, a company offering a system to save energy when using high-consumption devices both at home and in the workplace. The system aims to reduce spending on energy by remotely monitoring and controlling the use of such devices in real time. By tracking data such as production rates or the weather, users can reduce energy consumption.
Finally, a "favorite project" was also selected by visitors of the Group’s web portal StarAfrica. Over 24,000 visitors voted for the Kenyan project "Dukalangu". This online shop offers customers a wide range of products at competitive prices. The site also provides Kenyan entrepreneurs and designers with an excellent development opportunity by enabling them to market and sell their products online.
Orange operates in 20 countries in Africa and the Middle East and has a total of over 84 million customers.
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