Two Kenyan startups, Kwikbasket and Afriagrimark emerge among the finalists at the 2023 Sankalp Africa Awards which were held on the sidelines of the 10th edition of the Sankalp Africa Summit.
The Sankalp Forum, an initiative of Intellecap, one of Africa’s largest convening on impact entrepreneurship and sustainable development and are the convenors of the Sankalp Africa Summit taking place at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies, from the 1st and 2nd of March 2023.
The winners are as follows.
Legendary Foods from Ghana emerged as the overall winner. It is a food tech startup, which is on a mission to produce West & Central Africa’s most cost-effective, nutritious, resource-efficient and accessible form of protein, palm larvae, with technology and farming systems proudly built in Ghana.
Vetsark Limited from Nigeria, emerged as the First Runners Up, they are an agri financing startup, which helps farmers and agribusinesses in Africa access finance, increase productivity, and improve their profitability. They bridge the gap between farmers and financial institutions and is helping unlock the potential of African agriculture by providing farmers with the financing and support they need to grow their businesses.
Agki Medical Laboratory from Tanzania was the The Second Runner Up, this a healthcare startup, which is working to solve the problem of Anemia in pregnant women and children under the age of five living in rural communities. It uses an Electric car to offer a digital mobile dispensary for rural patients by providing affordable laboratory tests for diagnosis, clinics, medications for treatments and Free Health education.
Hearty Engineering from Ethiopia was the Fourth Winner, in a category called the ‘Sankalp Ecosystem Award’ which is given through a voting process from practitioners from the developmental ecosystem. Hearty is an agri tech startup that provides an Intelligent and IoT supported technology device that helps monitor and treat Livestock’s health thereby showing how innovation can make significant impact when wrapped in technology.
Kwikbasket is an agritech startup which works to improve farmers’ lives by improving their access to fair markets while providing high quality fresh produce to their customers.
Afriagrimark on the other hand is a marketplace that connects various truckers to vendors who need immediate fresh vegetable delivery from farmers. Vendors on the same delivery route easily share trucks cutting transport costs by 40%, delivery time by half and post-harvest losses to 3%.
Zivanae Afya Bora from Tanzania, is a healthcare startup which enables patient’s especially pregnant mothers and women to access reliable and instant online healthcare services.
ThinkBikes, a Circular Economies startup from Nigeria, it works by providing last mile transportation using Electric cargo bikes made available for ride-sharing and lease to individuals and businesses in urban and rural communities for affordable rates.
Every year, the Summit recognizes and rewards high impact enterprises from a pool of promising finalists, in the Africa region which are tackling key development challenges. The finalists also got the opportunity to pitch their enterprises to a jury panel comprising of eminent business leaders and investors.
Arielle Molino, Sankalp Lead and AVP Intellecap Africa, had this to say,“Sankalp today, in its 10th year in Africa, celebrates a decade of impact and the Sankalp Africa Awards has truly been a regional trailblazer when it comes to identifying and supporting hundreds of impact enterprises whose business promise and potential is a crucial to solving economic and development challenges. This year we were once again inspired by the ideas and the cutting edge innovation of our winners, each of whom demonstrate the ability to drive action and influence positive outcomes.”
The Summit, is supported by Visa Foundation, GIZ, Villgro Africa, FSD Uganda, US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and Energy Catalyst, engaged over 1,400 stakeholders, from 70+ countries around the World, including participants from 40+ African countries.