Recently, startups from across East Africa convened in Kampala to showcase East Africa’s finest upcoming scalable startups. The event dubbed ‘The Launchpad’, saw founding entrepreneurs of eight startups give a five minute-pitch quite similar to TED talk on their entrepreneurial journey. What started off as a chilly, quiet evening turned out to be a frenzy, memorable networking event from the exciting presentations from the founders of the startups. There was one aspect that was quite common with these startups, all of them had an aspect of creating social impact in their respective communities in East Africa.
As such, the story of their entrepreneurial journey was not the typical ‘rags to riches’ story but stories of how they made East Africa and the folks better while making money, what we could clearly term as the change agents of our time. Well, there could be no better way for them to become bigger change agents than a partnership with Unreasonable East Africa, a start-up accelerator based in Kampala. Unreasonable East Africa is determined to give these startups an advantage as they tackle East Africa’s greatest challenges so that they can grow faster and scale to meet the needs of over a million lives each. Such impact is what the founder of Unreasonable East Africa, Mr Joachim Ewechu, envisioned while growing up in the outskirts of Kampala. A world where all folks had access to amenities and led a relatively decent life. But who were these unreasonable entrepreneurs and startups?
Kyaninga Child Development Centre
First on stage was Steve Williams and Fiona Berkerlegge, the cofounders of Kyaninga Child Development Centre (KCDC), a local start-up based in Fort Portal. KCDC’s start-up story was quite emotional. William’s son, Sidney, encountered severe seizures and epilepsy while young. In the quest for finding treatment for Sidney, KCDC was born to bridge the large gap pertaining to the treatment and taking care of thousands of such children living in disabilities in Uganda.
Bidhaa Sasa
Next on stage was Bidhaa Sasa (Swahili word for ‘goods now’), a start-up founded in Webuye Kenya. The founder, David Disch, came face to face with the tough reality that inequality in rural Africa is rife. He visited Webuye and asked where he could get a modern cooking stove from a vendor and the unbelievable answer was ‘only Nairobi’, an eight-hour drive from Webuye Kenya. But how would an old lady get to Nairobi to source for affordable quality goods in the first place? Disch figured out, if they say, ‘Product is king, then distribution must be God’. On that premise, Bidhaa Sasa was born, a start-up enabling families in rural Kenya to affordably own quality household goods through in-house credit and door to door delivery with payments integrated with mobile money.
Solight
The next start-up on stage was Solight, with Adam Cameron as the founder. Solight is a Ugandan solar products start-up that was incorporated on the premise that 30 million Ugandans use kerosene for lighting their homes and small businesses. Solight, therefore, provides the first steps for Ugandans climbing the energy ladder. With affordable financing and payment options, Ugandans can afford to own solar lamps for only Shs300 daily for six months. Quite the equivalent to their daily expenditure on kerosene for six months. Since inception, Solight has managed to deliver solar lamps to more than 1300 families countrywide.
Next on stage was SII, the social impact institute, a start-up based in rural Kenya and founded by Wanjiru Gathiru. athiru encountered the hard truth that deforestation is real from the piece of land that her grandfather had left after passing away. Her grandfather was passionate about nature, an aspect that was nurtured in her. The problem is, landless rural communities cut down trees to eke out a living. In partnership with the government of Kenya, SII implements a model where landless rural farmers get to temporarily own a piece of land by planting trees and utilising the allocated land for farming and once the canopy of the trees close, they relocate. This creates a win – win solution for the government and the landless poor, where they get to farm and make a living and the government gains reforestation of vast pieces of land that have undergone deforestation.
Inagape
Next on stage was Inagape, a start-up founded by Patricia Griffin and John Lankeu Inagape is Kenya’s first dried coconut chip manufacturer. Its aim is to augment the incomes of Kenya’s coconut farmers through value addition. Inagape, founded on the premise of ‘trade not aid’ to solve Africa’s teething problems, has touched the lives of many small-scale coconut farmers in Kenya.
Simusolar
Then came Tanzania’s only start-up for the Launchpad. Simusolar is a start-up focusing on improving the lives of the rural poor in Tanzania with clean energy solutions through affordable financing. Through pilot studies for small businesses and smallholder farmers such as poultry farmers and dairy farmers, they have been able to customise solar energy solutions for them.
Numida Technologies
Next on stage was Catherine Denis of Numida Technologies, a local start-up that was incorporated to aid the local small business owner in generating financial track records important for access to credit and making evidence based financial decisions. It was setup out of the challenge that the local small business owner cannot access credit from lenders due to lack of financial records; hence, bridging the gap between the lender and the small business owner. Numida, therefore, has developed an app, Track app, to aid these business owners.
The highlight of the event was FarmDrive. I could hear the audience whisper, ‘She is young!’. And yes she was. Rita Kimani founded FarmDrive with her cofounder, Peris Bosire, after coming face to face with the hard fact that farming in rural areas was not profitable and small holder farmers were languishing in the poverty cycle due to lack of financing and technological tools to till their land. By leveraging on technology, FarmDrive has enabled farmers to get access to loans through their mobile phones.
As we come face to face with economic realities in East Africa such as the recent indebted companies’ bailout issue, we should mind our focus. Would turning our focus onto startups offer a bailout for the Ugandan economy?
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