AGRF and Heifer International have launched the Pitch AgriHack 2022, a digital agriculture competition focused on accelerating entrepreneurial growth and job creation in the agriculture sector by leveraging advanced technologies and youth participation in Africa’s food security agenda.

This seventh edition of Pitch AgriHack invites African businesses to pitch their approach to driving technological innovation in the agriculture sector. Generation Africa, a thematic platform of the AGRF will host the competition, which is sponsored by global development organization Heifer International.

The competition provides cash prizes to innovators driving increased use of technology and job creation across the agricultural sector in Africa

Benefits

• The open competition portion of Pitch AgriHack 2022 will support companies that are driving innovation in agriculture across three categories with prizes totaling US$45,000:
  • Early-stage,
  • Mature/Growth-stage,
  • Women-led
• A fourth invite-only category, known as the AYuTe Africa Challenge, sponsored by Heifer International, will award up to US$1.5 million in grants to scalable ventures that are already generating measurable impact for Africa’s smallholder farmers.
• Six winners will be selected from the open-application categories and two winners from the invite-only AYuTe Africa Challenge category. The winners will be announced at the AGRF Summit which takes place September 5-9 in Nairobi.
• Top contestants will receive a one-day boot camp in preparation for their final pitches, with winners receiving continued support as they develop and grow their enterprises.

Eligibility Criteria

• Candidates are early-stage, growth-stage, or women-led AgTech companies with innovative solutions impacting smallholder farmers at scale.
• Applicants should have:
  • A clear and defined description on how their solution is impacting small holder farmers
  • Strong organizational and operational structure

The applicant applying must:

• Be aged 18-40 on the day of submission to the 2022 Pitch AgriHack Competition
• Hold nationality (with official ID) from any of the 54 nations of the African Union
• Be the founder/co-founder of the enterprise represented in the competition and play an active role in its operations and leadership
• Have no criminal record related to corruption, tax evasion, financial impropriety, felony or other offences
• Not be a previous Pitch AgriHack finalist or winner
• Must submit the application form in English
• Must agree with the Terms & Conditions

Early Stage Category – The Venture must have:

• The ability to scale and impact a large number of smallholder farmers
• An identifiable technological innovation that addresses the following problems for smallholder farmers:
• Smallholder farmer productivity
• Smallholder farmer income
• Labour intensiveness of operations
• Resilience
• Access to information for smallholder farmers
• Strong competitive advantage

Growth Stage Category – The Venture must have:

• The ability to scale and impact a large number of smallholder farmers
• Recorded evidence of demonstrated impact on smallholder farmers’ revenue
• An identifiable technological innovation that addresses the following problems for smallholder farmers:
• Smallholder farmer productivity
• Smallholder farmer income
• Labour intensiveness of operations
• Resilience
• Access to information for smallholder farmers
• Strong competitive advantage

To learn more about this competition, go here.