Picture: Screengrab
The Africa Cup hosted by the SA Innovation Summit (SAIS) is centre stage competition providing start-ups and early stage companies in all tech-enabled sectors from around the world to compete.
The Africa Cup aims to promote and develop the entrepreneurial creativity of start-ups who are disrupting the traditional ways of doing business. This is an opportunity for all early start-ups with potential, scalability, and expansion plans to showcase their technologies while obtaining access to funding, new markets and PR exposure.
This year, the Africa Cup competition saw a host of different companies from e-commerce to mapping, competing for the coveted prize.
“The Africa Cup has always taken centre stage at the summit and features high growth, early stage startups who are competing for the top spot in Africa,” said the host of the Africa Cup 2020 pitch battle Lance Witten.
This year featured a panel of highly esteemed judges hailing from a variety of backgrounds namely: Erik van der Vyver (Patent Attorney, Von Seidels), Kanina Foss (COO, Anza Holdings) Irfaan A. Khota (Investor, Industrial Development Corporation) and Maxime Bayen (Company Builder, Greentec Capital).
This year saw 12 incredible startups from across the continent and different tech sectors go head to head to take the Africa Cup 2020.
First prize - PricePally Limited
PricePally who are a digital food cooperative that is solving the food insecurity crisis has come out on top to take the 2020 Africa Cup! The unique buying culture of PricePally, where people buy food in bulk or share bulk food items directly sourced from farmers and wholesalers, makes it easier to access food at affordable prices even far better than retail. The PricePally model, which has fully gained grounds in Lagos city, solves more than just the problem of price, it helps guarantee the quality, safety, logistics and traceability of food people consume. Our vision is to help ten million families in African cities reduce their monthly spend on food by 30% or more and we have been making huge progress with the PricePally model in Lagos.
PricePally, which is available on web, iOS and Android platforms, has recorded a huge success with the Lagos model. This creates an opportunity to expand beyond Lagos to other cities in Nigeria and in Africa. Community-based buying or cooperative shopping is the future of the food industry and PricePally is taking the lead in that space, with PricePally being the first go to place for people in Lagos and soon other African cities when they think about buying food.
Second place- Nanostream Blu (Autoscholar Advisor)
Modern Scholarship is a non-profit organisation created to connect educators and students with modern technology and new methods in teaching learning. These new methods help reduce the cost of quality education, increase access by learners, and assist with managing and organising the educational process. More specifically, these methods are based on technologies involving Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Animated Simulations and Open-Source Multimedia.
A significant outcome of the Modern Scholarship work lies in the reduction of student debt and an overall reduction in the costs of quality education. First, the programme includes continuous development of open-source on-line educational content and resources that are developed within the MOOC paradigm. Learners can therefore access lecture and even assessment materials free of charge. This material supplement course materials, or, in the case of institutions which recognise and accredit the available content, serve as a low-cost alternative to the traditional forms of access by students.
Secondly, the automated systems which generate customised advice to students have been shown to increase the rate at which students pass curricula. Through the customised advice generation that Artificial Intelligence generates, it is observed that students achieve graduation significantly earlier than students receiving more traditional advice. In well-run academic programmes, there significant nuances that must be incorporated into the progression rules of a curriculum to ensure an optimised curriculum. Unfortunately, the attendant increase in rule complexity can reach levels that make it quite difficult for a human to provide the best possible advice to students. The inconsistency in advice given by staff to students not only results in suboptimal academic programme performance but even leaves institutions open to litigation. Finally, Modern Scholarship staff are able to assist students with accessing study funding directly in the form of bursaries and no-interest loans.
Third Place - Finvex
Finvex.tech’s cloud-based platform allows corporates to use their existing transaction data to free up cash trapped in their supply chains and generate risk free returns, while giving their SME suppliers access to affordable finance. All too often, a buyer chooses when the supplier gets paid. Finvex.tech decouples this relationship. As soon as an invoice is approved by the corporate buyer, a supplier can opt to get paid within 24 hours instead of waiting for 60, 90 or 120 days. The corporate “lends” its superior credit risk to the small supplier giving them access to financing at costs that can be up to 5x cheaper than what the supplier could get from other lenders. Rezaan Daniels, CEO of Finvex.tech explains “The corporate buyer builds a stable supply chain. Suppliers have the cash flow they need to grow. Finvex.tech builds financial technology products to transform working capital management.
Finalists who received special mentions and various prizes at the Africa Cup Awards include:
Fundi
Luma Law &
Ejoobi
The 2020 Africa Cup was certainly a spectacle to behold and gives us a great sense of pride in knowing that African startups are successfully claiming their place amongst the top technology innovators worldwide.
IOL TECH