Three Kenyan startups were awarded at the “Seeds for Sustainable Energy”bootcamp which took place in Nairobi on 2-5 May. At the end of a four-day course, FarmerLifeLine Technologies, FarmIT, and Koch Food Waste Management Champions were considered companies with strong growth potential, and for this reason received a grant worth EUR 10,000 each in startup support services.
In more detail, FarmerLifeLine Technologies focuses on the health of crops by detecting pests and diseases ahead of time, while Farm IT provides farmers with digital services to improve their livelihoods. Lastly, Koch Food Waste Management Champions collects waste and turns it into various products, including compost and fertiliser, briquettes and oil.
During the demoday on 5 May, all the finalist startups were given the opportunity to present their business projects in front of a panel made up of Eni's top management and representatives of the local innovation ecosystem. This was the final moment of the entrepreneurial skills development course, organised with the mentorship of experts in business design and digital marketing.
The joint open innovation initiative was promoted by Joule, the Eni School of Entrepreneurship, and Eni's Tech and Agroenergy areas.
The programme, developed with the support of BeEntrepreneurs APS and hosted at the E4Impact Entrepreneurship Centre in Nairobi, involved three international and ten local startups, selected from over 200 applications received when the initiative was launched last January.
“Seeds for sustainable energy”, an initiative in line with Eni's “dual flag” approach, was created with the two-fold objective of contributing to the sustainable development of new agricultural supply chains and generating a concrete impact on the economic and social fabric of the territory, by supporting local innovation proposals in the agritech sector which could potentially be applied in the context of the first agrihub launched by Eni in Makueni County in 2022.
Within this context, agriculture plays a significant role in terms of both GDP and employment, and agritech is the second most important sector after fintech. Kenya was the first of the African countries to enter the vertical biorefining supply chain, offering income opportunities and market access to tens of thousands of farmers.
