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Startups

Five innovative startups looking to transform africa

The shortlist has been announced of five innovative companies which are in the running for the AfricaCom's AHUB Pitch & Win 2019 competition, in partnership with GSMA.

The winner will be the one that receives the most public votes. Entrants submitted video pitches on their business in order to be awarded a consultation with GSMA's startup experts, one-on-one introductions to investors, enterprises and peers and a pitching slot on the AHUB start-up stage. Additionally, the lucky winner will also be given two all-access passes to AfricaCom 2019, as well as AfricaCom's highly anticipated official networking party, AFest.

The five innovators competing for top honors are:

1. Greenfingers Mobile (GFM) -- an SaaS company that enables transparency in the value chain and digital IDs for small farmers. GFM replaces traditional pen- and paper-based farm management systems with a platform that collects farm and farmer details, baseline and household data for impact measurement, records yields and commercial transactions in order to build credit worthiness, monitor field extension staff activity, and to ensure that effective and timely assistance is provided in the field.

GFM allows agri-businesses and co-operatives to meet the criteria of food corporations, and ethical standards for different stakeholders. It allows integration of APIs and is crop agnostic.

2. MiMi Money -- a peer-to-peer mobile/blockchain technology company that reduces Africa's high cost of remittances. Africans pay the highest rates in the world to send money home, with an average cost of over 9% according to the International Organization for Migration. MiMi Money is especially useful and relevant for millions of unbanked Africans, while at the same time, creating a multitude of jobs for computer- and smartphone-literate African youth, as end process agents.

3. One Kiosk is reshaping retail across Africa by matching customers and merchants together in geographical locations that make it easier to deliver goods. One Kiosk is a safe, fast and secure platform leveraging GPS, artificial intelligence and machine learning to match customers to merchants within a 1-2km radius. The Nigerian company promises delivery within 20-59 minutes.

4. Rainmaker is changing the way destinations do business in the tourism industry and allowing more money to flow to the destination instead of losing, sometimes up to 60% of revenue, to channel partners. The VISTA Destination Network Open Platform and Ecosystem is an award-winning supply site platform, connecting hospitality and tourism businesses with each other.

It creates competitive advantages for all hospitality and tourism businesses in the destination, including local tour operators, gaining back control of the visibility, reputation and distribution for the entire destination and related businesses to become less dependent on market-dominating value chains.

5. Wireless Power (WiPo) cuts the power cord, enabling autonomous operation for ultra-high-powered industrial equipment. WiPo provides wireless powered solutions for drones, electric forklifts and factory robots, allowing automatic charging using wireless power. It has also developed a drone port solution that enables the autonomous operation of drones whilst automating charging of drone batteries without the need for human interaction.

Voting will close on October 18, 2019 at midday South Africa time. Watch all the entrants' video pitches and cast your vote here.

AfricaCom 2019 takes place in Cape Town, South Africa from November 12-14, 2019.

— Gabriella Jeakins, Content & Communities Lead, Informa Tech.

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