The final AMPION Venture Bus of the year – the Southern African leg focused on hardware and agriculture – begins today, with the bus departing Windhoek, Namibia, and travelling through Botswana before concluding in Cape Town, South Africa at the AHUB event next week.
Disrupt Africa reported last month pan-African startup competition AMPION announced the nine winners from the three other Venture Bus competitions of the year, in Morocco, West Africa and East Africa, with the winning startups becoming part of the AMPION fellowship programme.
The fourth and final bus trip begins today, with the opening ceremony taking place in Windhoek in partnership with FabLab Namibia. From there, the AMPION bus will travel to seven cities and divide its 40 participants into 10 teams.
During the trip, which features a halfway pitching event in Johannesburg and culminates at the AHUB event in Cape Town on November 18, participants will build prototypes for solutions to local challenges. They will then pitch their solutions to an investor jury, with winners joining the AMPION fellowship.
“Our Venture Bus Southern Africa will be the last of four tours this year and we are excited to add to the tech ventures we have already built across Africa this year,” said Deborrah Schaer, head of marketing and communications at AMPION.
“The focus will be hardware and agritech. With the agricultural sector being the largest in Africa, we hope to come up with a handful of scalable solutions to innovation in agriculture.”
Disrupt Africa reported last year AMPION ran buses in West, Southern, East and North Africa between October and December 2014, with the first two years of the AMPION Venture Bus programme producing over 30 tech startups.
