An agricultural technology solution named Tifat has become yet another startup — after Matibabu and Innovex, that will be raising the Ugandan flag at a continental technology event.
Developed to link farmers to buyers, Tifat will be representing Uganda in DEMO Africa’s regional competition. This came after its developers won a two-round contest at a DEMO Africa tour held at Hive Collab in Kampala.
The event was held on June 11, 2018, and it was the first DEMO Africa Innovation Tour. The tours will rotate in eleven African cities, namely: Kigali, Nairobi, Gaborone, Harare, Cairo, Tunis, Casablanca, Lagos and Accra.
The last tour will be hosted in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon on July 5.
Farmers in Uganda face various challenges when trying to expose their produce to the market. Among these is the use of middle-men to supply their products, which , at times, leads to a few returns on investment .
During the competition that happened at Hive Colab, Tifat showed that it could solve this challenge; it beat other 5 solutions — Yunga, 2ambale, Yakako Pay, Airtime Ninja and My Saving to scoop the nomination. The face-off was judged by Dustyn Winder from Prehype VC, Patrick Ngolube from Hive Collab and Kenneth Legesi from the Kampala Angel Investors Network (KAIN).
About 30 start-ups participated in the competition right from the beginning, and, according to Harry Hare, an official with Demo Africa, it is a sign of maturity in the Ugandan Innovation and Entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Demo Africa is an organization aiming at identifying and connecting African start-ups to the global startups ecosystem through provision of funds, mentorship and necessary tools for them to meet the required standards.
Francis Nsanga, one of the innovators that developed the project says that “TIFAT has been providing post-harvest loss reduction knowledge and creating market opportunities for thousands in Uganda. We support the beneficiaries of our technology with real time and forecasted market information to both farmers and buyers for informed decision making and planning.”
This year, TIFAT will join Kenya’s Advanced IT Solutions Limited which emerged the best in Kenya competition. The group presented a navigation tool built a GPS and proximity sensors to assist vision impaired persons in their day to day movement.
Developers from TIfat pose for a picture with Demo Africa officials
Rwanda is yet to hold its pitching competition to recognize their flag bearer for the regional contest.
It is from there that the best start-up in the East African region will head to compete in the grand finale set to be held in Morocco on October 18 and 19, 2018.
All innovations that will emerge as regional winners will part of the pool of 30 where the best startup will be provided with resources worth over US$150,000 including US$120,000 software tools from Microsoft and USD$15 000 from AWS that to help them build and grow their businesses.
