The Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) is set to hold the third edition of its MEST Africa Challenge.
The challenge is the African tech startup pitch competition for early-stage companies based in Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Cote d’ Ivoire. It is expected to bring together African tech Startups and provide them with equity investments.
The competition, which took place in 2018 for the first time, offers equity funding as well as publicity to participants and winners. It received more than 700 applications from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa in its first year.
Previous winners of the MEST Africa Challenge come from different African nations, covering numerous sub-sectors in the tech space.
Nigeria’s fintech startup Accounteer won the inaugural edition in 2018. In 2019, the competition had 3 champions-Oze (Ghana), WayaWaya (Kenya) and Snode Technologies (South Africa).
As per their tradition, the competition will run a series of regional competitions in 2020 that will lead to the main challenge. Each of the target countries will host regional events.
The top five winners of the regional events will have the opportunity to pitch in front of businessmen, investors, corporate partners and ecosystem players later in the year. This gives them the chance to win $50K in investment from the Meltwater Foundation.
The winner also gets to join the MEST Africa incubator community.
Applications for the contest this year are already open and are due to be closed by 18 April.
Regional events are scheduled to hold as follows: Lagos (1 May), Johannesburg (4 May); Addis Ababa (8 May); Accra (11 May); Nairobi (11 May); Abidjan (12 May), Kigali (14 May); Dar es Salaam (18 May); and Darkar (22 May).