Winners have emerged in the 2022-2023 Global Startup Awards (GSA) Africa (West Africa) held at the launch edition of GITEX Africa 2023 in Marrakech,
Morocco.
The fourteen startups that won this year’s competition are from Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Senegal, and Benin. Nigerian startups topped the list by securing six slots at this year’s competition.
This includes the awards for Best Newcomer (Awabah); Startup of the Year (Salubata); Best Agri-Tech Startup (Crop2Cash); Best Health-Tech Startup (Emergency Response Africa); Best Ed-Tech Startup (Dataleum Limited); and Best Web 3.0 Startup (Xend Finance).
Ghana emerged the country with the second-highest number of winning startups after securing three awards which are Best Incubator / Accelerator Programme (2Scale); Diversity Role Model of the Year (Developers in Vogue); and Ecosystem Hero of the Year (Demasko Farms).
The Global Startup Award (GSA) Africa serves as the exclusive platform for the Global Impact Investment Group (GIIG) to discover, finance, and nurture Africa’s most groundbreaking startups. A primary objective of GIIG is to identify, fund, and foster African innovations that possess global significance.
Leveraging its unique profit-and-purpose fund, known as the GIIG Africa Fund, the organization strategically invests in transformative technologies that have the potential to catalyze new markets and expedite sustainable development across Africa. There is also the GIIG Africa Foundation that facilitates the collaboration between African innovators and the appropriate expertise and strategies, forging connections with global partners to enable growth on a global scale.
In 2021, the launch of the Global Startup Awards Africa competition drew thousands of entries from startups across the continent. The following year, it received an impressive 7,589 entries spanning 12 categories, showcasing African innovation.
This year, the 2022-2023 Global Startup Awards (GSA) Africa competition witnessed even greater participation, with 8,272 entries from all 54 African states. As a result, 71 regional winners emerged, representing Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western, and Central Africa. Notably, the line-up of regional winners comprised representatives from twenty-three African countries.
It was also focused on solutions in agriculture, climate change, commerce, education, healthcare, and mobility & logistics, with a keen interest in startups building Web 3.0 technologies, sustainable business models, green innovation, and diversity in the workplace.
