Digital Innovation Challenge for Agriculture in Africa

2SCALE, one of the largest agribusiness accelerators in Africa, just launched its first innovation challenge. This is a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs to scale their digital innovation amongst the 750,000 farmers in the 2SCALE program. 

We’re looking for digital innovations such as hyperlocal weather forecasting, mobile finance and traceability solutions which hold the potential to transform agricultural value chains. 

Are you an entrepreneur with a digital innovation that boosts climate smart agriculture in Africa? Apply to our challenge! It’s easy and takes under an hour.

Have a look at our challenge: www.2scaleinnovation.org

On Tuesday 22 October at 1pm (Ghana time) we are organizing our Q&A webinar. Sign up by sending your name to webinar@2scale.org 

FAQ

Why should I participate in this challenge?
We unlock scaling opportunities for your business within our 60 2SCALE partnerships and their 750,000 farmers across 8 countries in Africa. You’ll get access to a network of inclusive business and innovation experts for technical support. What’s more? You will be featured on the 2SCALE website and we might mobilise a research team that studies the impact of your innovation and share learnings for improvement.   

Who can apply to the challenge?
Any entrepreneur or organisation with a digital innovation, ready to scale in the 2SCALE countries Kenya, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Niger with own financial means. Your innovation is not new to the market and you have already been generating revenues from it for at least one year.
You bring much of the budget required to finance the implementation of your innovation in 2SCALE(we are not a grant provider but might compensate reasonable startup costs to offset risks of entering a new geography or adapting your innovation for the 2SCALE partnerships.    

What type of innovations are we looking for?
Your innovation is using digital technology to benefit actors in the smallholder farmer value chain, including low-income groups within the roles of producers, service providers, distributors or employees. Moreover, your innovation addresses pressing problems in the 2SCALE sectors of our partnerships Animal Production Related, Staple crops, Soy and Oil Seeds, and Fresh Produce.   

What is 2SCALE and what are the partnerships?
2SCALE is an incubator and accelerator program that manages a portfolio of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs or partnerships in short) for inclusive business in agri-food sectors and industries. The first edition of 2SCALE ran from 2012 – 2018 and the second edition has just started and will run until 2023, with the objective to establish and support 60 partnerships. These are led by business champions, which are either entrepreneurial producer organizations or local SMEs that trade or process the produce of farmers. 2SCALE offers a range of support services to its business champions and partners, enabling them to produce, transform and supply quality food products for local consumer markets, preferably at the Base of the Pyramid.

This innovation challenge aims to contribute to one of the key workstreams of the 2SCALE program which is to introduce innovations into its partnerships.