Mastercard Foundation and MIT Legatum Center have announced 10 start-ups as finalist that will compete for the Zambezi Prize 2018 for Innovation in Financial Inclusion.
The challenge is targeted at financial inclusion entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa and was established in 2015 to showcase Africa’s “most promising and innovative” early-stage start-ups.
The winners list is dominated by Kenyan start-ups like; Apollo Agriculture, Bidhaa Sasa, FarmDrive, and Tulaa. An outstanding intersection between all these is their focus on rural agri-business development.
Other start-ups include; Farmerline (Ghana), LanteOTC (South Africa), MaTontine (Senegal), OZE (Ghana), RecyclePoints (Nigeria), and Wala (South Africa).
These will meet up with stakeholders from MIT and tech ecosystems at the MIT Open Mic Africa Summit in Nairobi, Kenya scheduled to hold on August 28th and 29th.
The event will include awarding the Grand Prize Winner $100,000, the two runners-up $30,000, while the seven remaining finalists will each receive $5,000 in cash prizes.
Withal, the entrepreneur who demonstrates outstanding leadership qualities will receive a $5,000 prize from the Legatum Center. All finalists will receive mentorship from “MIT leaders and Zambezi alumni companies” during the event.
Some of the past Zambezi Prize finalists include Tugende who emerged third in 2015. It currently has at least 150 employees and has served over 12,000 customers.
Tugende, a lease-to-own startup, recently closed funding in form of a $5 million loan from OPIC to scale both within Uganda and the East African region. Other winners have included Kifiya, PlusPeople, MFS Africa, Chamasoft, Nomanini, FirstAccess, AgriLife, MChanga, and mJara.
The Grand Prize Winner, Umati Capital received funding from Accion Venture Lab, Blue Haven Initiative, and Lundin Foundation.