Shortlist announced for AfricaTech Festival (AfricaCom)

As the Africa Tech Festival (the home of AfricaCom) turns 25 this year, it also hosts the 15th edition of its spectacular Award ceremony that acknowledges the continent’s greatest telecoms and technology contributors.

The Awards feature 11 categories, with three new categories having being added: Start-up of the Year, HealthTech Innovation of the Year, and VC / Investor of the Year.

Voting (click here) closes for the 2022 Africa tech Festival Awards on Wednesday, 26 October, 2022. The shortlisted candidates who receive the most votes will be sent to the Africa Tech Festival panel of expert judges, and the winners will be announced during a live drinks reception & ceremony on Wednesday, 09 November at Africa Tech Festival 2022, in Cape Town.

The shortlisted nominees are:

Start-Up of the Year This award recognises the most innovative start-up, that has showcased potential over the last year for high growth and purpose-driven impact.

• Womenovate - a female focused online learning platform, based in Nigeria, offering women in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Agriculture and Mathematics) access to resources, training courses and jobs from world-class universities and companies, helping to close the gender gap/disparity and increase female participation in STEAM fields and sectors.

• Ujuzikilimo Solutions – based in Western Kenya, the company empowers small scale farmers and stakeholders to make fast, informed and data-driven decisions on the go, by collecting and making sense of agricultural data through sensors and farm data analytics tools.

• Carscan - a mobile augmented reality app powered by AI, that’s the first of its kind in the motor industry, Carscan uses computer vision and machine learning to scan vehicle damages and provide real-time vehicle health condition and repair estimates.

• LayUp Technologies - an advanced recurring payments system focused on driving financial inclusion in Africa through cloud-based pre-payment technology, and services businesses with digitised subscriptions, memberships, and debit order payments; making interest-free instalments simple and easy to use for both merchants and their customers.

• Sendoff Funeral App - Sendoff digitizes the entire funeral process, providing convenience, information, and a 10X better CX, radically changing the approach to deathcare, with its user-friendly, intuitive mobile app that houses a library of online resources.

HealthTech Innovation of the Year New for 2022, this award recognises emerging technologies for healthcare across Africa, that are changing lives, advancing healthcare, and impacting individuals and communities for the better.

• Nextwear Technologies - the very first wearable technology start-up in Nigeria, and inventor of a smart bra that can detect breast cancer in its earliest stages.

• Medismarts Limited - Medismarts is a MedTech firm that leverages technology, data, and foresight to identify and create viable and innovative healthcare solutions that cut across key areas such as Hospital Management Systems, Health Insurance/Claims Processing Software, Self-Service Portals that automate claims submission and patient management, and more.

• Zurihealth - Provides affordable and accessible healthcare solutions through an all-inclusive service that caters for individuals with a mobile device, regardless of their location, health history and social status.

• OuiCare - OuiCare is an electronic health record that allows the collection, storage, processing, and provision of secure medical data for patients, healthcare professionals and institutions. This health book is coupled with telemedicine and medical appointment scheduling, which is a major advance in the field of health in Cameroon and Africa.

• One HealthTech - a global, distributed, volunteer-led community that drives better equality, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in health innovation.

• Kena Health - a South African health tech app enabling anyone to have an on-demand online doctors’ consultation from their smartphone.

VC / Investor of the Year Award This Award recognises the most impactful fund in Africa, which provides investment to support, build, and scale their investee businesses.

• South African Housing and Infrastructure Fund – it diversified its real estate investment portfolio into high-growth, service-oriented assets further up the real estate development value chain. The fund identified optical fibre and renewable energy as the next growth frontiers for their affordable housing and land portfolio. Metro Fibre Networks was a high growth emerging player in South Africa's Fibre-To-The-Home and Fibre-To-The-Business markets.

• Enygma Ventures - an investment fund for female entrepreneurs and women founders, focused on Southern Africa or SADC.

• Meridiam – an asset and fund manager invested into African infrastructure, including 4 solar power plants in Senegal, a geothermal power plant in Ethiopia, a hydropower plan in Gabon, a biomass site in Cote d'Ivoire, and solar home systems in West Africa. It has now invested into helping build and develop over 12 tier III carrier-neutral data centres across the African continent.

Fintech Innovation of the Year This Award recognises the organisation, project or individual who has disrupted the African Fintech space

• Premiercredit Zambia

• FinBraine Fintech Pvt. Ltd

• Kyanda Africa

• Stitch

• Floatpays (Pty) Ltd

• Chipper Cash

Green ICT Champion This award celebrates the individual or organisation leading the development and integration of sustainable energy solutions

• Raxio Data Centres

• Faith Wawira Nyaga, Senior ICT Officer, Water Resources Authority

• Dr. Olufunso Somorin, Regional Principal Officer at the African Development Bank.

• Ihs Group & Huawei “Green Power” Innovation

Connectivity Project of the Year This award celebrates the network providers and services going above-and-beyond to provide connectivity in an environment where demand has never been higher, and broadband has become a lifeline for access to education & economic activity.

• Curvalux - The Curvalux Connectivity Project in South Africa

• Open Access Data Centres

• Nuran Wireless

• The Kayamandi Fibre Project (KFP)

• Vodacom ZA and Huawei

• Avanti Communications: Project iMlango - Led by Avanti Communications and its partners (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), sQuid, Whizz Education and Camara Education)

• Ericsson & MTN Benin

CXO of the Year This award recognises the outstanding achievements of CEOs, CTOs, CIOs, CDOs and others in driving development within the African tech space.

• Samuel Chiwanda, Click Mobile Malawi

• Ernst Fonternel is Chief Digital Officer at MTN South Africa.

• Daniel Ale is the Partner & Chief Technology Officer at Prunedge

• Derrick Ashong is the Founder & CEO of AMP Global Technologies

• Sanjay Kumar Kai is the Group Director at MFI Document Solutions Limited

• Pieter De Villiers, CEO and co-founder at Clickatell

Female Innovator of the Year This award will recognise the outstanding achievements of women who are playing a crucial role in African technology and telecommunications

• Rutendo Mugadza-Mugwagwa is the Founder/CEO of Zimbabwe Innovation & Legal-Tech Association

• Oladiwura Oladepo is the Co-Founder and Executive Director at Tech4Dev

• Chilufya Mutale, founder and CxO at Premiercredit Zambia Limited

• Irene Phoebe Kiwia, Co-Founder At Adanian Labs

• Chineme Onuoha Areola is the GM for Local & International Business Development at Broadbased Communications Ltd.

Most Innovative Product or Service This award recognises a game-changing product or service that has provided its target market with significant new opportunities for revenue growth or customer satisfaction.

• Orange's Mahali mobile application

• MTN SA & Huawei - a fully digitalized, intelligent & experience-driven digital transformation platform

• Innovation City Cape Town - Innovation City is an invitation-only world-class network that aims to help accelerate digital innovation in Cape Town through fostering co-creation.

• Premise Data – a sophisticated market intelligence platform that blends machine learning with human intelligence to empower decision makers with the high-quality, trustworthy data they need

• Jiji Cars - Jiji Cars (formerly Cars45) is a leading Autotech company in Africa and a vertical on the biggest online Marketplace in Nigeria

• Clickatell – Chat2Pay, a digital payment enabler that is a new channel for businesses to request payments over chat channels.

Africa’s Rising Star Celebrating the emerging talent in African tech - recognising and identifying future leaders and disruptors.

• Kessia Ntirandekura, Co-Founder Ecobba • Bhavik Pattni, Chief Of Staff and VP Business Operations at the Raxio Group. • ADA TAPILY, Developer, Project Manager, Problem Solver, and Tech Entrepreneur at Massira • Nonhlanhla Cynthia Mhlongo is the Founder and CEO of Khwezi Innovations. • Joseph Lumbahe, Lead Engineer, Computer Vision at Aizatron Group and a contracted (via Aizatron) Fraud Detection Engineer at MTN South Africa. Changing Lives Award Recognising organisations and initiatives that have made a significant contribution to helping us build a more accessible and inclusive digital world

• SeamlessHR and Special Olympics Nigeria – Codeable initiative

• Hormuud Telecom – humanitarian portal (Somalia)

• Project Isizwe - #AfricaUncapped

• M-Kopa - combines mobile payments and IoT connectivity to enable people in remote parts of Africa to purchase the products they need, and power them affordably.

• The Ethiopian Industrial Parks Development Corporation - an engine of rapid industrialisation that nurtures manufacturing industries, accelerates economic transformation, promotes, and attracts both domestic and foreign investors

• ANSI – the Smart Villages for Rural growth and Financial Inclusion Project for Niger.