Egypt's Agricultural Startups Could Win EGP 90,000 At World Bank's Pitching Competition

Even though 98 percent of Egyptian land is composed of deserted space, around 40 percent of Egypt's labour force work in agriculture. Many young entrepreneurs, such as those behind CottonBall, are slowly but surely coming to the realisation of their country's timeless treasures hidden in its soil. The World Bank has long been aware that agriculture is a key aspect in Egypt's macroeconomy, and now came the time to work towards improving it. In collaboration with Yomken, NilePreneurs, and EgyptInnovate, the World Bank has launched a pitching competition tailored for agricultural startups with a techie edge. 

DigitalAG was founded on May 9^th, aiming to ensure the inclusion of youth and the private sector, and crowd source innovative ICT solutions to raise efficiency of agricultural markets. And in the meantime, they would also tackle related issues such as logistics, food loss, waste, water resource management and environmental degradation. 

Reports indicate that there is a total untapped export potential for Egypt that reaches at least $15 billion equivalent. In an attempt to leverage on this potential, some of DigitalAG's partners will be offering seed funds of up to EGP 90,000 per solution. The awards, announced on September 15^th, will be tailored to the needs of the winning solutions, and will include incubation, capacity building and training. According to the challenge's website, key criteria to winning this challenge are innovation, achievability, clarity, focus, scalability and sustainability.

Applicants should form teams, each comprising at least two members, as individual submissions will not be accepted. The solutions should use mobile, broadband, digital and/or information technology, to strengthen agricultural markets in Egypt, and should be tailored and applicable to the Egyptian context, as well as focus on at least one of the three tracks identified by this challenge: access to markets and services, access to finance, and resource management.  

For more information, you can check Digital AG's website here.

Shoot by @MO4Network's MO4Productions.
Photography by Amr Medhat.