Startups from across Africa have been named as finalists for this year’s edition of the AppsAfrica Innovation Awards, which will offer winners industry recognition, global publicity, and networking opportunities with industry peers.
The annual awards – which are supported by Uber, JET8, Syntonic and Mobile Monday South Africa (MOMO) – attracted over 300 submissions from 39 countries from startups, established ventures and corporates.
Winners will be announced at the awards party in Cape Town on November 12, with category winners also invited to Africa Tech Summit Kigali 2019 in February next year to join more than 400 tech leaders from across the continent.
Applications for the 14 categories were assessed and judged by an independent panel of industry experts, including media, investors, and leaders from the tech ecosystem, and have now been whittled down to 70 finalists.
Various startups are amongst them. Aerobotics (South Africa), Farmcrowdy (Nigeria), Kitovu (Nigeria), TroTro Tractor (Ghana) and WeFarm (Kenya) are all finalists in the agri-tech category, while Custos Media Technologies (South Africa) is nominated for the Blockchain Award.
The Best African App category also features Farmcrowdy, as well as SafeBoda (Uganda), while Medixus (Kenya), RippleNami (Kenya) and Flutterwave (Nigeria) are nominated for the Changing Africa Award.
NALA (Tanzania) and Zuoix (Cameroon) are nominated for the Disruptive Innovation Award, with Kytabu (Kenya), Snapplify (South Africa) and WeThinkCode_ (South Africa) up for the ed-tech prize.
In the Enterprise Solution category, Kirusa (Ghana) and Kobo360 (Nigeria) are finalists, while Flutterwave and NALA again feature, alongside Paylater (Nigeria), in the fintech section.
The HealthTech category sees Baobab Circle (Kenya), Flare (Kenya), myPaddi (Nigeria) and WellaHealth (Nigeria) named finalists, while LÜLA (South Africa), as well as Zuoix again, nominated in the mobility section.
The Social Impact category again features Farmcrowdy, myPaddi and WeThinkCode_, as well as ScholarX (Nigeria).