KIC Agritech Challenge - ... ... .Eight Business Teams Selected for Final Round

Eight out of 14 business teams have been selected to proceed to the final round of the Kosmos Innovation Center AgriTech Challenge programme.

The AgriTech Challenge is an annual competition that encourages young entrepreneurs to take a fresh look at the agriculture value chain and to identify new areas of business opportunity.

An expert panel of judges called the Ideation Team assessed the business viability of each idea presented on the day.

The teams found to have the most scalable, practical and innovative business concepts were, Farm Cure, resolves challenges with pest control, Soil Solution, resolves challenges withsoil quality, Growth Factor, provides access to finance information and Tech Shelta, provides farm management services

The rest are Lojaanor, provides market linkages, Alpha (rotate), provides access to skilled labour and information, AgroSol, provides agro-processing and market linkages and Quidex, provides access to finance information.

A statement issued by Kosmos Energy in Accra said the surviving teams would now have three months, from July to September, to develop their business concepts further and develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) before the final pitch.

The objective of this according to the statement was to ensure that the entrepreneurs have viable prototypes of their products ready so that they could be tested out by potential future users, customers and investors.

The statement said "This element was added to the programme structure in 2017 and has proved to be very useful, giving teams the opportunity to really validate their products before the final pitch."

"The Kosmos Innovation Center intends to continue with this measure in future AgriTech Challenge programmes. Teams are also required to build a solid marketing and scalability plan prior to the final pitch, drawing on what they have learned from their capability and skills training sessions," the statement said.

Some Ghanaian and international companies and institutions were invited toattend the pitch event in June - includingPuma Energy, OCP Africa, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, RMG-Ghana, KOICA-Ghana, YARA and the Netherlands Embassy.

Joe Mensah, VP and country manager for Ghana said "We encourage corporate Ghana and other institutions to join hands with Kosmos Energy to support youth-led businesses to grow and develop, just like Premium Bank of Ghana and the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) did in 2017."

" Together we can drive sustainable innovation in the agriculture sector and contribute to tackling Ghana's youth unemployment challenge. By empowering one entrepreneur at a time, we are investing in a brighter future," he said.

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