07 Dec 2016

Orange -sponsored agriculture start up mAgri was announced as the first prize winner of the Pitch AgriHack competition.

According to a press release, PitchHack which aims to accelerate youth-led e-agriculture entrepreneurship for improved livelihoods and food security, unveiled the winners of the 2016 pitching event during an award ceremony in Nairobi, Kenya on 24, November.

It further states that Pitch AgriHack 2016 was organised by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) in collaboration with the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the support of partners including the Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International (CABI) and mLab East Africa.

According to Naledi Magowe, marketing manager and Co-Founder of mAgri, their prizes include E7 500 cash prize plus additional prizes and resources provided by Prohaus VC who is one of the partners of Pitch AgriHack.

“The additional prizes include seed capital from Prohaus capital of between US$10 000 and US$20 000, digital tools, startup ratings report, mentor sessions and one complimentary remote accelerator or workcation programme,” she said.

Ms Magowe said that mAgri is a USSD based mobile application which enables the marketing of agricultural products throughout Botswana, as well as providing a service network between the farming community, agricultural merchants and service providers.

Using ANY cell phone, including basic handsets and from any part of Botswana, farmers are able to receive valuable agricultural information (agri tips, updates and weather alerts), set up business profiles and mobile stores which enable trade, enables access to micro-financing, chat, email and Wikipedia search.

The app has over 190 000 users and has both English and Setswana options, and is simple enough for any person to navigate. Try mAgri for free by dialling *118# on your Orange phone.  

She noted that the competition was hotly contested with 25 finalists being selected out of the total 152 e-agriculture startups from across Africa and the Caribbean.

Ms Magowe explained that  before the announcement of winners, finalists benefited from a training boot camp on 22 November at Ihub Nairobi, which focused on offering successful business services in e-agriculture.

The finalists were also coached on how to pitch effectively. ENDS