Yesterday, we managed to join the large crowd that turned out for the Innovation Baraza, a local fair held in Harare, which was aimed at showcasing local innovation that has the potential to solve some problems while creating a positive impact through entrepreneurship.
Out of 40 teams that spent the whole day showcasing their work to the judges and the rest of the crowd, 5 teams, from a shortlist of 10 were selected. These teams will undergo mentorship and an incubation process for the next two months as they prepare to present their ideas at the Simba Savannah Investors Forum in Kenya this coming October.
The five selected from Innovation Baraza 2015 were:
A startup that provides agricultural information to farmers and agricultural traders including specifics on market prices. This is shared through SMS, social media and through a web platform. So far eMkambo has 150,000 subscribers
Ned Machine
These guys have developed a solution that automates the feeding process for poultry. Their solution is energy efficient and draws on power from a standard 12 Volt battery.
Road Rules App
This is the Android based learners’ licence app that helps a user study for the provisional licence test. It has gotten a lot of attention over the past few months as it has also secured a place at this year’s upcoming DEMO Africa tech startup conference in Nigeria.
Stokvel
The team, which is part of Afrosoft’s new Afrolab, has an app also called maRound which automates the payment of money in a community savings clubs or maRound which are also known as Mukando or Stokvel in South Africa. The app works for all mobile money solutions, a characteristic it has touted as a point of differentiation and advantage over Econet’s EcoCash Savings Club.
Their solution is a mobile app that acts as an on-demand service for car washing services. Users can locate the closest mobile car cleaning service (provided by the Vigil team) within a specific radius, and request for their services. In an effort to be conscious of the environment, Vigil also provides this car cleaning service using a solution that uses only 2 litres of water.
The people’s choice team which, unfortunately, didn’t make the top 5, was the crew from Queen Elizabeth Girls High. The girls were showcasing the bottle lamp that uses water, chlorine bleach and recycled 2-litre plastic bottles to create a low-cost lamp that reflects the sun’s rays into a room during the day.
8 comments
Well done guys.
I made one similar to the road rules app and its almost complete. There seems to be nothing interesting about any of these applications
Let us see your app, sir!
Congrats to all the Innovators, you all had amazing ideas, we hope you all can follow through with them.. A big congrats to the Queen Elizabeth Girls High for winning the peoples Choice and the NEW Hisense U601 Smart Phone!
Great to see innovators putting forth their best efforts in improving theirs and t heir community’s lifestyle/economies in small ways, building blocks right. That’s how it started here in silicon Valley.
Its always an app heee heee a system.Guys we need to be serious, think big and have scalability and international market penetration in mind.Uyo we Road Rules app ngaasiyane nazvo tanzwa nazvo.In fact all of these startups don’t have anything new about them.Most importantly please we need revenue projections.Will these things make money and grow?
Amen.
Monetize! Innovate on ‘monetizable’ stuff OR innovate on monetizing…
Anyways, much as most guys here are saying this n that, we have to begin from somewhere, and this is it! Its the innovation ecosystem that is needed now and you shall see that with time, even more excellent stuff is going to come. Remember the first ‘urban groovers’????? The likes of David Chifunyise and all??? We dont hear about them, but there is no doubt that their music genre evolved from them. So I believe these guys could be pioneers, and may or may not make it very big, but its necessary to have this happening.