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Two climate smart organisations have won $20,000 at the African Climate Innovation Challenge (ACIC), a climate pitching event hosted in Ghana at the Ghana Shippers Authority.
The organisations, Green Tech Africa from Congo and Farmer Lifeline Technologies from Kenya were adjudged the best in the challenge organised by a youth-led climate change non governmental organisation (NGO), Green Africa Youth Organisation (GAYO).
Represented by their innovators, the Chief Technology Officer of Farmer Lifeline Technologies, Jacob Maina, from Kenya and Divin Koueba from Congo,the winners were each presented with $10,000 for their projects aimed at addressing Africa's pressing climate challenges.
They were selected from six finalists made up of organisations in climate smart agriculture from across Anglophone and Francophone Africa who pitched their business ideas and how those address climate change concerns and help improve the agriculture sector on the continent.
The GAYO ACIC is aimed to empower young Africans to develop innovative solutions to tackle the continent's climate-related issues.
The competition received an overwhelming response, with over 500 entries in its preliminary stage from 30 African countries.
The selection process was thorough as a panel of judges, comprising climate experts, entrepreneurs and thought leaders evaluated the projects based on their innovation, scalability, impact, and potential to address Africa's climate challenges.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Co-Founder of GAYO, Desmond Alugnoa, said the ACIC was initiated over the past 10 years to help inspire young people who are change and transformation leaders in their communities in Africa.
“The ACIC came as the result of the ideas and some of the aspirations that we meet when we are convening young people.
We set it up to give opportunity and platform for other people who are actually taking climate action and have ideas they want to pilot,” he said.
Mr Alugnoa affirmed that this opportunity and funding would enable young people to scale up their ideas,to be able to bring them to life and expand the market to actually experience full climate action.
Mr Alugnoa indicated that GAYO would continue to provide incubation support and mentorship, as well as track impact indicators that would help the beneficiaries measure their progress in the implementation of their ideas and also address some challenges they might face in the process.
Problem-solving ideas One of the winners Maina, when reacting to his team’s success, said with his innovation, the Farmer Lifeline Technologies aimed at solving problems faced by farmers by using technology to come up with timely solutions.
He explained that their technology was a crop disease and pest detection device, which would be mounted on farms to take pictures frequently and in case a pest or disease was identified, it would send an SMS to the farmer of the infestation and the action to take.
He expressed gratitude to GAYO for the opportunity to partake in the ACIC which culminated in winning his company $10,000 to help expand his business and address concerns of climate change in Kenya and beyond in the years to come.
