My life as an MBA student is eventful. This week I went to an entrepreneurship DemoDay where six great leaders presented their startups. The event is part of Fledge, a company helping conscious entrepreneurs globally.
Six of these companies come from Africa and all are dedicated to help the continent get out of the poverty by solving huge problems such as access to electricity or clean cooking fuel, deforestation, hunger, and access to banking.
The last one is from Argentina and is providing a great solution to the plastic waste littering our soils and oceans. What if we turned what was considered as waste as a precious commodity ?
Here is a quick resume of the event published by Michael Luni Libes, the serial entrepreneur and founder of Fledge. For all six companies you will find below their contact details, a video of their respective pitches as well as the name of their founders.
Zambia – Paul Nyambe
Half the population of Zambia are subsistence, smallholder farmers. The poorest of the world’s poor. However, as part of their culture, they raise goats. Zamgoat is the first commercial aggregator, processor, and distributor of those goats, bringing goat meat to the growing number of urban Zambians, who love to eat goat meat, but can’t today buy it in stores.
SMEFUNDS/Green Energy BioFuelsNigeria – Femi Oye
The cleanest, greenest, safest cooking fuel is alcohol, generated from agricultural waste. Green Energy BioFuels produces and sells such a fuel (and matching stoves) in Nigeria.
SMEFUNDS/GoSolarAfrica
Nigeria – Femi Oye
Half of Africans have no access to electricity. Nigeria itself has over 200 million citizens, but produces less electricity than the State of Washington (less than just the Grand Coolee Dam). GoSolarAfrica solves this with solar power.
Ensibuuko
Uganda – David Opio Obwangamoi
Nearly all Ugandans are farmers, using saving and credit co-ops to rather than banks. These SACCOs today run on paperwork and trust. Ensibuuko modernizes their operations, bringing SACCOs into the 21st Century, bringing access and credit to the cloud and to the farmers’ mobile phones.
45% of the fruits and vegetables grown in Nigeria are lost between the farm and retail customer. Hundreds of tons of perfectly good food… wasted. ColdHubs is fixing this problem, bringing cold storage to the marketplaces of Nigeria.
I will soon publish a series of articles featuring these companies, so stay tuned !
Thanks for the mention Ed.
My pleasure, really. Great entrepreneurship classes, great Fledge DemoDay. Thank YOU Luni, really ! 🙂