Africa netpreneur prize, founded and funded by one of China’s richest men and the Founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, to support the next generation of African entrepreneurs has entered its second edition.
A few days ago, 50 finalists across the African continent got selected, but this number will soon get trimmed down to 20 finalists.
The first edition of the Africa netpreneur prize got launched in some selected cities in Africa in 2019 and Nigerian start-up LifeBank, founded by Temie Giwa-Tubosun, emerged the winner.
The second edition got launched earlier in the year and over 22,000 applications, from all over Africa, representing 21 African countries, were received.
According to the overview of the statistics of sectors/industries that applied:
- 50 % of the entrepreneurs that applied were females
- The top dominating sectors include Agriculture, Artificial Intelligent, e-commerce, fashion, Healthcare, Renewable energy, ICT, Big Data, business services, construction, education, engineering.
- The average age of the cohort is 37, with the youngest candidate aged 22 and the eldest aged 64.
- 32% of the finalists are francophone.
The 50 finalists that scaled through were swiftly moved to the next stage and they all participated in an exclusive virtual Bootcamp hosted by Africa’s Business Heroes team, which was carried out yesterday, reducing the list to 20.
The list will further be trimmed down to 10 finalists, who will eventually, progress to the final round of tests that will determine the winner of the grand prize, later on in the year.
Some of the selected judges for this years Africa netpreneur include, Rafeh Saleh, Director of the Founder Institute and Omolara Awoyemi, Senior Program Manager at Facebook.
Featured Image: nairametrics
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