Digital Innovations for Business Resilience in the East African Community, a program under the dSkills@EA project aims to support young innovators at universities in the East African Community to develop and implement digital innovations for business resilience in the times of Covid-19.
Teams applied with a digital innovative ideas and participated in practical training and 5 had the chance to win a shared grant of USD 10.000.
More information about dSkills@EA
Digital Innovations for Business Resilience in the East African Community, a program under the dSkills@EA project aims to support young innovators at universities in the East African Community to develop and implement digital innovations for business resilience in the times of Covid-19.
To join the program, motivated teams can apply with a digital innovative idea to participate in practical training and the chance to win a shared grant of USD 10.000.
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After an online application phase, selected participants will go through an online Ideathon in February 2022 to refine their ideas.
Based on the Ideathon, max. 10 teams per country of the EAC will be selected for a physical 5 days bootcamp training taking place in each country in March 2022. Evaluation criteria for entering the bootcamp are:
How urgent and important is the identified problem?
How desired, innovative and effective is the solution?
Has the team the
skills and zeal to
execute the idea?
Is the business model scalable and has viable unit economics?
Is the idea technology-based or implemented with digital means?
The bootcamp closes with National Pitch-Events in March 2022, providing a relevant opportunity to connect Universities and Industry.
The winners from each country then will compete at the online East Africa Grand Finale in April 2022. At the Grand Finale, five winners will be selected by an expert jury. The USD 10,000 will be split among the five winners according to the stage, needs, and potential of the winners. It will be decided by an expert jury including investors.
10 selected teams per country will pitch at the National Pitch-Event and present their digital innovations to the industry, academia, investors, government representatives and the entrepreneurship ecosystem.
A judging panel of experts will select two teams per country which are going to compete at the East African Grande Finale.
It’s time to celebrate digital innovations from 6 East-African Countries and to bring the East African Innovation Ecosystem together. The event will be hosted purely online and will provide everyone a chance to participate. During the Grand Finale, 12 teams from 6 EAC will pitch their innovations for grants of a pool of USD 10,000.
Digital Skills for an Innovative East African Industry (dSkills@EA) is a project as part of the technical development cooperation between the EAC and Germany. Digital Innovation for Business Resilience in the EAC is a program under dSkills@EA project.
The political partners are the East African Community Secretariat and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The main implementation partners are the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), together with an East African-German academic consortium of universities and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).