Three startups have been named winners of the inaugural Africa Startup Cup, splitting US$229,000 worth of prizes and progressing to compete at the global finals to be held in Silicon Valley.
Disrupt Africa reported the winners from 18 local StartUp Cups around Africa were eligible to travel to the regional finals – the Africa Startup Cup – held in Ghana over the weekend, to present their business models to an international panel of judges.
Three overall winners from across Africa were selected to compete in the World StartUp Cup in Silicon Valley for investment, mentoring and coaching packages.
The winners from the weekend’s African final emerged as Morocco’s GoMobile, which leverages existing technologies to create innovative products that allow unconnected communities to enjoy the benefits of new technologies; Airsave from Uganda – which provides a secure digital mobile saving platform; and Ghanaian local coffee house Kawa Moka.
The three startups will travel all expenses paid to the global finals in Washington DC; and also won an all expenses paid trip to the RiseUp Summit in Egypt.
They also share US$229,000 worth of prizes, including access to IBM Global Entrepreneur services; Microsoft technologies such as AZURE cloud services, MSDN, Office, Bizspark and Visual Studio; Amazon’s Cloud Services; dotco internet domains; as well as admission to the Rackspace startup programme.