ThriveAgric of Nigeria, DigicCow of Kenya, and Brastorne Enterprises of Botswana won the AYuTe Africa Challenge. These three African agri-tech businesses will each receive US$1.5 million in grant cash and specialist advisors.
Heifer International‘s AYuTe Africa Challenge supports African agri-tech innovators. Heifer supports young entrepreneurs in developing affordable technical advances to scale their businesses with this challenge.
The three businesses will receive a total of $1.5 million in grants as a result of their victories in the 2022 AYuTe Africa Challenge. In addition, they will receive ongoing support from a team of expert advisors who will assist them in developing an aggressive expansion strategy to make use of the funding they have received.
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The senior vice president of Africa programmes at Heifer International, Adesuwa Ifedi said, “At a time when Africa is facing unprecedented food-related challenges, it is incredibly inspiring to see these young African champions firmly focused on an agriculture-led future that provides farmers with the innovations they need to succeed.”
“We launched this competition in 2021, challenging African youths to bring us innovations poised to provide the positive disruption our farmers urgently need. ThriveAgric, DigiCow and Brastorne are more than ready to meet the moment.”
Past Winners of the AYuTe Challenge
In the previous challenge, the AyuTe Africa Challenge Nigeria, which is run by Heifer International, gave cash grants totaling $20,000 to three agritech innovators in Nigeria in an effort to improve food security via the use of technology.
The winners of the show were Soupah Farm-en-Market Limited, Simkay Foods Limited, and Evet Technology. These three companies took the first, second, and third positions, respectively, and were awarded a cash prize of $10,000, $6,000, and $4,000, respectively, according to their respective positions.
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Remark from the Director
Previously, Rufus Idris, the Country Director of Heifer International Nigeria said, “We are also operating a sector where small holder farmers are currently struggling and living in poverty because they cannot access essential services, care market, improved input and seeds, as well as finance and technology that can help them to increase and improve their productivity. Nigeria and Africa’s small rural farmers population are aging, we have an average of 60 years old and the younger ones are not interested in replacing those that have retired.”
The country is experiencing spiralling inflation, which is mostly driven by inflation in the cost of food; it should be noted that the country needs young people who are energetic, tech-savvy, and entrepreneurially skilled in order to revolutionize the agriculture sector.
Heifer International decided to invest more than $1.5 million to greatly leverage agriculture entrepreneurship in Africa and through AYuTe Africa Challenge cash grants to assist promising young agritech entrepreneurs across Africa who are utilizing technology to re-imagine farming and food yield across the continent.
Heifer International has taken a good step to address the problems that have been identified in the agricultural sector of Nigeria by investing in the AYuTe challenge.