F5.5G Leap-forward Development of Broadband in Africa The Africa Broadband Forum 2024 (BBAF 2024) was successfully held in Cape Town, South Africa recently, under…
Meet the six startups battling it out at IBM’s SmartCamp [Tech4Africa]
Every year IBM puts together SmartCamp sessions that showcase some of the world’s most promising startups. This year, the pitching sessions for the Africa leg of SmartCamp took place at the Tech4Africa conference.
“IBM SmartCamps judge the best startup companies in different cities around the globe, rewarding the winners with mentoring, services, access to industry experts and deeper partnership opportunities from IBM, venture capital firms and industry partners, says Paul Brunet, Vice President of ISVs, Startups and Academic Programmes for IBM.
For IBM, the aim of SmartCamp is to spark innovation.
“IBM SmartCamp Africa 2013 has six startup companies, selected from all over Africa. These companies will present their innovative solutions and businesses that align with IBM’s Smarter Planet strategy,” says Brunet.
For the startups in the finals, the goal is to win and go on to represent Africa at the regional SmartCamp finals in Istanbul, Turkey.
The six finalists who pitched at Tech4Africa will take part in six rounds of mentoring from a group of experts to help them solidify their businesses before the final pitches.
Meet the final six:
A platform for managing field teams and roaming workers. It is an operations platform that aims to make businesses that rely heavily on locations work better. Incivent hopes that its system will solve the problem that medium-sized field companies face.
The company visualises events, tasks and messages, and allows a business to have a better view of what is happening in the field with workers. It allows for comprehensive reporting and it claims that it is fast, and comes with mobile integration.
Smart Mobile Applications is a business solution provider that leverages mobility to align with client requirements.
“We are a SMART mobile solutions organization that builds solutions for industry that aligns service expectations with business systems,” says the startup.
Essentially SMAPP is a cloud-based enterprise solutions that helps companies better understand and meet their client needs.
This company claims to be in the process of developing the “first ever” consolidation of high-tech agricultural services. Essentially it is a system that collates and collects all the data that a farmer needs. “A one stop shop for all the farmer’s needs,” says the company founder, Wolfgang von Loeper.
The cloud-based solution will mine agricultural data like weather so the farmer doesn’t have to. It’s business model is to charge the farmers for the service.
One SP calls itself a closed payment solution that allows customers to create their own payment ecosystems, independent of the high association costs. The solution is aimed at alleviating fraud, reducing banking costs and providing control over where, when and how the funds are utilised.
WezaTele claims that it is a leading service provider of innovative value added solutions, platforms, hosted-on-demand services for multi-window platforms ranging from mobile phones to tablets and desktop computers.
The way it’s doing this is through Myorder Enterprise — a solution that helps distributors streamline their supply chain inefficiencies through mobile solutions like text messaging and USSD as well as Android apps.
Wuzzuf.com is a job recruitment platform created and managed by tech startup BasharSoft. BasharSoft was founded in 2009 and says it is “one of a very few companies in the MENA region specialised in developing Innovative Online Recruitment Solutions for top enterprises and organisations”.
According to the company its subscription-based jobs platform intelligently matches job seekers with available jobs.
