Fall Armyworm Tech Prize

The Fall Armyworm Tech Prize is seeking digital tools and approaches that provide timely, context-specific information that enable smallholder farmers and those who support them to identify, treat, and track incidence of fall armyworm in Africa.

What is the prize about?

This prize is focused on sourcing and sparking innovations for African smallholder farmers and those that work with them. But given the global nature of this problem, we anticipate some of these solutions could have relevance beyond Africa.

The prize seeks solutions that:

• Enable smallholder farmers and those who support them to accurately identify incidence of fall armyworm in their crops.
• Produce timely, context appropriate, and empowering insights for smallholder farmers to treat the incidence of fall armyworm.
• Reduce productivity losses caused by fall armyworm among those using the tool or approach.
• Ensure the appropriate and responsible use of pest management assessments, tools, and interventions.

How does the prize work?

The prize is open to all for a seven week entry period from 28th March – 14 May 2018. Prospective innovators will have to apply via our online submission form. All entries will be assessed and judged against the judging criteria. 

The finalists will be invited to our co-creation event for three to four days in Uganda at the end of June. 

After the co-creation event finalists will have eight to ten weeks to hone their innovations. As part of the final submission, finalists will need to complete a development plan (similar to a business plan) and submit a video demonstrating their solution. Additionally, during this period, user testing will need to take place – the finalist’s prototypes will be tested with sub-Saharan African smallholder farmers and extension services to understand how viable the product is and how much of a difference they think it could make in recognizing and intervening in the spread of fall armyworm. 

In September/October, a final award event will be held, where the winners of the prizes will be announced. All finalists will have the opportunity to present their prototype and plans to convened stakeholders. 

There are five prizes, totalling $400,000:

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