Here are the 3 winners of the Orange African Social Venture Prize

The winners of the Orange African Social Venture Prize have been announced at AfricaCom 2014, with Modisar and its agriculture app coming out top.

Part of major telecom operator Orange’s development programme, the competition featured initiatives ranging from healthcare to agriculture and education, and has received more than 450 candidates responses to the call for projects, which ran from May to September 2014.

Marc Rennard, Orange’s Senior Executive Vice President for Africa, the Middle East and Asia, touched on the importance of promoting technology in  Africa in order to help drive development:

Orange is proud to be able to contribute to this dynamic, particularly by providing active support to the prize-winners. This year’s jury was impressed by the overall quality of the projects submitted. We can clearly see that technology is a relevant tool for driving social development, and this gives us an added stimulus in our commitment to Africa.

Hailing from Botswana, Mobisar was awarded first prize for its livestock farm management app. From managing your farm’s resources to finances, the startup aims to stimulate development in Botswana’s livestock industry. This, Mobisar hopes, will be done by connecting traditional farming to modern technologies.

The Station Energy Ivoire won the second prize for its mission in setting-up franchise stores in its home country, Côte d’Ivoire. This would be done by providing stores access to affordable energy. The shops are equipped with photovoltaic panels to provide a range of shared services that include charging batteries, internet access and so forth.

The third runner-up is Senegalese-based Bouquet Pass Santé. The startup has created an online platform that enables people living abroad or in Senegal to pay directly for medical consultations for themselves or family members.

There was also a “Favourite” category that people voted for. More than 20 000 people voted for the Ivorian project PubCell, which is a concept that offers advertisers the ability to promote their brands on mobile phones by paying advertising fees for the rental of their private spaces.

The special Orange Partner API prize was awarded to Mewanko Farm — a project that involves the creation of an online platform to enable the sale of agricultural products on both urban and international markets. The aim is to facilitate the lives of small farmers by using ICT tools to provide them with a direct means of access to markets and enabling them to increase their income.