Earlier this year, we partnered with Villgro Africa to develop a call for innovations dubbed “Harnessing the Power of AI for Africa’s Development” targeted to entrepreneurial AI innovators in Africa. Villgro Africa, an early stage business incubator and impact investor was looking for innovators interested in building products and services that will harness the power of AI to solve some of Africa’s development challenges.
As part of this initiative, the selected innovators will join a bootcamp and will work hand in hand with Villgro Africa, to build high impact, sustainable and commercially viable products and services.
“We have been wonderfully surprised by the volume and quantity of innovations coming from this call. We received over 180 applications from 18 African countries and selected 11 innovators from 10 countries. The African AI-enabled innovation ecosystem is dynamic and growing and we are thrilled to be able to support these innovations on a path to impact and sustainability.”
Rob Beyer, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman – Villgro Africa
These are the selected startups who will provide solutions in a variety of sectors including agriculture, maternal health, medical diagnostics, disability assistance and financial inclusion.
Agrix Tech
Sector: Agriculture
Country: Cameroon
Agrix Tech have developed an application that helps farmers to detect, treat and prevent crop diseases sustainably and in an environmentally friendly manner.
Learn more about them: Agrix Tech
Agripoa
Sector: Agriculture
Country: Mauritius, Tanzania
Agripoa has created a farm management software that uses AI to support farmers in planning, monitoring, and analysing all farm activities by linking them with input suppliers, agronomists, insurance, and financial institutions.
Learn more about them: Agripoa
Redefine Africa
Sector: Finance
Country: Tanzania
Redefine Africa is creating machine learning software that can be deployed on retail account customers and agent data to provide a model that can predict churn and activity.
Learn more about them: Redefine Africa
XSENSEAI
Sector: Health
Country: Tanzania
They have developed an AI web application to detect breast cancer as early as possible based on ultrasound images, with a detection accuracy currently of 91%.
Learn more about them: XSENSEAI
Ocular (Makerere AI Lab)
Sector: Health
Country: Uganda
Ocular has developed a diagnostic AI tool to improve the accuracy of malaria testing. It comes with a smartphone adapter and seeks to counter the limitations of the normal microscopic diagnosis which is eye straining, time consuming and prone to variations because of individual expert judgement
Learn more about them: Ocular
Dawa Health
Sector: Health
Country: Zambia
Dawa Health has created a digital health platform that increases access to maternal health for pregnant and nursing mothers in Zambia.
Learn more about them: Dawa Health
Sekani
Sector: Health
Country: Kenya
Sekani has built an application that uses AI and neural networks to translate sign language using the camera feed to fill the communication gap between the deaf and hearing.
Learn more about them: Sekani
Naana Technologies
Sector: Health
Country: Burkina Faso
Naana Technologies is a software application that uses ultrasound images of the breast to aid clinicians in the diagnosis of breast cancer.
Yelenkoura Technologies
Sector: Health
Country: Mali
Yelenkoura Technologies creates an intelligent electronic guidance device that helps blind people perceive their environment through vibration and sound alerts.
Learn more about them: Yelenkoura Technologies
Brain Tumor Detection
Sector: Health
Country: Senegal
Brain Tumor Detection provides a computer vision approach for detecting brain tumors.
Streamline
Sector: Health
Country: Uganda
Streamline is a community health-based insurance in rural areas of Uganda. It provides service through a digital insurance platform that utilises machine learning in pricing of premiums, cost management, and fraud detection.
Learn more about them: Streamline
We are excited to see these innovations flourish and bring Africa that much closer to solving her problems using the power of Responsible AI