11 African Start-ups Secure Corporate Partnerships at AfricArena

Eleven start-ups across Africa have gotten a partnership with corporate sponsors for winning challenges at the AfricArena conference in South Africa. The AfricArena event showcased Africa’s best start-ups and innovators in front of an audience of local and international investors looking for world-class talent.

During the two-day conference, start-ups pitched in 11 open innovation challenges organised by sponsors like Vinci Energies, AirFrance KLM, Engie, Saint-Gobain, and RCS. The winners of each challenge secured a partnership or proof of concept deal with the relevant sponsor.

South African start-ups won two challenges sponsored by Air France KLM, with township discovery platform, DiscoverIkasi winning one and gaming start-up, Sea Monster coming second.

The Engie Challenge was won by Nigerian energy company, Arnegy, and the Leroy Merlin Challenge, which wants an immersive showroom experience that shows off a large variety of products, was won by South Africa’s bizAR Reality.

Also, Saint-Gobain sponsored two challenges and South African companies, Swift GeoSpatial and Student Hub won the challenge, while another South African start-up, Iyeza Health, won the Sanofi South Africa Challenge.

South African verification platform, ThisIsMe was named winner of the RCS Group Challenge, while Senegal’s Oniriq and South Africa’s DataProphet won the two challenges put together by Vinci Energies. South African Agri-tech start-up, Aerobotics won a trip to the VivaTech conference in Paris.

All start-ups in attendance will receive US$2,000 credit from AWS as part of their prize. Christophe Viarnaud, CEO of AfricArena, said the event’s collaborative pan-African model had demonstrated very high impact throughout 2018, with 16 events on three continents.