14th November 2019
Own Correspondent
The Botswana Innovation Hub (BIH) has sponsored 4 innovative entrepreneurs to the Global Slush Competition in Helsinki, Finland from the 14-23 November 2019.
Slush is the world’s leading technology Startup event that brings together the leading actors in the global tech scene to Helsinki, Finland every year in November.
The event has over 25 000 attendees, 4000 startups, 2000 investors, 600 journalists and over 1 million live stream viewers. The purpose of the event is to support impact startups and showcase the exciting business opportunities in emerging markets. In addition, the event focuses on strengthening the networks between the impact actors, engaging global impact entrepreneurs, and enhancing the mobilization of capital towards impactful businesses.
Representing Botswana at this year’s Slush event is;
Bernard Sebakile representing Sakab Holdings; An electrical engineering company that specializes in providing clean, reliable and affordable electrical energy through off grid power systems, solar generators, solar mini plants and other related solutions. The company is instrumental in production of eco- friendly electricity for Botswana. Sakab Holdings builds reliable solar and storage power systems specifically designed to work where there is no access to grid electricity and also work as power back-up. These systems enable customers to generate, store and manage their own 24-hours power supply, letting them become independent of unreliable power grids and carbon emitting backup generators.
Thato Kasongo representing Mohiri; A personalized job alerts service that connect low-medium skilled workers to opportunities for work by sending them alerts on their phones whenever there is a vacancy that matches their profile. With the support and interventions of the BIH Acceleration Programme, Mohiri has grown from a reach of 0 to more than 230,000 online people every week, in just 10 months. Today, Mohiri sends out job alerts to a pool of 16,000 registered members who depend on the application as a source of vacancy announcements and other career-related opportunities and content.
Mavis Nduchwa representing Kalahari Honey; A company that creates employment, training women farmers in rural Botswana for bee farming to uplift their livelihoods, contribute to food security and conservation. Kalahari Honey helps close the gender gap, teach conservation, incorporate inclusive art experiences and work for wildlife-farmer conflict mitigation. Kalahari Honey is the honey aggregator for processing and marketing honey worldwide. Changing the world one bee at a time.
Boniswa Bayani representing Cyber Kajumo Rigs; A welding and rigging entity that specializes in giant art’s using metal waste. They turn metal scrap into mega art statues or monuments for innovations in the film industry, tourism and education fields. They use art to express modern technologies through refurbishing metals waste. The large art works are also icons for characters in African robotic movie concept. Their unique model also intends to develop replicas of the art works to educate through concepts of STEAM and also to teach basics of robotics and coding to young children. Innovations from our ART works are also focused pioneering the toy manufacturing industry in our country including applications and games based on the robotic characters.
The 4 startup companies were selected following a BOOST UP campaign organized by BIH in partnership with the Southern Africa Innovation Support (SAIS) that coached, trained and mentored startups to be able to pitch their solutions to international audience.
