MEST Africa Announces Regional Winners for its Africa Challenge

Startup incubator, MEST Africa, has announced regional winners for its MEST Africa Challenge. The regional winners will get the chance to pitch their products and ideas before global investors and business people at the MEST Africa Summit in June 2018.

This is the first startup pitch competition ever held by MEST for companies outside its incubator programme. The winner of the pitch competition will receive up to $50,000 in equity investment as well as mentorship at MEST’s incubator programme.

The regional winners emerged following regional events in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa.

The regional winners have all successfully built solutions solving real problems and proven traction in their home markets. They’ve also shown they have the potential to be successful abroad.

The finalists include the following startups:

• Data Integrated (Kenya): A payment processing company specializes in developing customized, end-to-end enterprise payment solutions for African SMEs. Data Integrated developed MobiTill S-Transport, a fleet management system for the Kenyan transport industry.

• Cowtribe.com (Ghana): A startup that leverages USSD technology to connect livestock farmers with veterinarians for better animal healthcare.

🇳🇬 We have a winner at #MESTLagos! @Accounteer will be headed to #CapeTown to pitch at the #MESTAfricaSummit! #MESTAfricaChallenge #startup #scaleup pic.twitter.com/FhlAsXyd4z

— MEST Africa (@MESTAfrica) April 28, 2018

• Accounteer (Nigeria): A business services startup, providing accounting and human resource management software through Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Its unique market is the African Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs), offering subscription packages as low as $10 per month.

Meet the winners of the @MESTAfrica Challenge : https://t.co/TsS38g83Ud Congrats to @cowtribe @Accounteer @DataIntegrated and swiftVEE!

— VC4Africa (@VC4Africa) May 14, 2018

• Swift Vee (South Africa): Another agro-tech startup providing a trading platform for livestock and other agricultural products. Swift Vee is also addressing tough agro problems like water scarcity, food security and market efficiency for the livestock sector. For its efforts, it has been named as one of South Africa’s 100 innovative companies.

All four companies will pitch at the MEST Africa Summit on June 20^th in Cape Town, South Africa. Hundreds of executives and investors from all across the world will be in attendance.