Eight startups have been named winners of the first Lagos Urban Innovation Challenge, an innovation competition aimed at finding solutions that can help solve critical urban issues in Lagos.
The Lagos Urban Innovation Challenge, run by Utopia in partnership with Skoll Foundation, Lagos Innovates, Future Africa, the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, Business Insider and Rain Tree, provides winners with access to a virtual urban accelerator, over US$10,000 worth of resources, and access to a support network from the challenge partners.
Eight winners have been selected from a pool of over 170 submissions, having passed through a selection process which saw industry leaders, venture capitalists, policy makers, futurists and urban professionals from across the globe serving as judges.
Six of the startups selected are from Nigeria, namely power supply data provider Upnepa, digital food cooperative PricePally, fish meal alternative producer Fly Colony, healthcare software provider MediSpark, recycling company GIVO, and real estate community platform GatePass.
Also selected were Senegal’s NIMA Codes is a simple yet powerful phone number-based addressing system, and Canada’s POKET, an end-to-end crowdsourcing platform for mapping and retail insights.
“The winners of the Lagos Urban Innovation Challenge will become part of the first virtual urban accelerator in Africa, and we’re excited to support and partner with these startups over the coming months to scale their innovations within Lagos and beyond,” said Emmanuel Adegboye, managing partner of Utopia Lagos.
