10 startups selected for the Inaugural Qualcomm Make in Africa Mentorship Program
Summary
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. has selected 10 startups to participate in the inaugural Qualcomm Make in Africa startup mentorship program, as part of the Qualcomm Africa Innovation Platform announced in December 2022.The startups which are based in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, and Rwanda are developing innovative products in clean energy, agricultural technology, computing for education, geospatial predictive analysis, medical technologies, and innovations utilizing electric vehicles. They have applied their talents and ingenuity to address Africas present-day needs in areas of reliable access to clean energy, precision agriculture to conserve water and other resources, adaptations of electric transportation for many last-mile needs, using AI and other innovations for accelerating disease pathology and treatment, and addressing energy efficient, affordable computing for the education market. Over the next few months, we will mentor them in areas of business development, technology applications and intellectual property law. We are honored to be able to participate in their entrepreneurial journey and their future impact in Africa.Theses startups were selected from a pool of 550+ applicants from 34 African countries by a global jury based on a variety of qualifications including technical capabilities, business factors, and potential for innovation and intellectual property generation.The Qualcomm Make In Africa startups will receive equity-free mentorship in business planning, engineering, intellectual property protection, and the application of advanced connectivity, sensing, AI/ML and other processing technologies for innovative end-to-end systems solutions. We believe that startups based in Africa are best placed to identify uniquely African problems that can be solved through end-to-end systems solutions and new business models, said Elizabeth Migwalla, Vice President and Head of Government Affairs (Middle East and Africa), Qualcomm International, Inc. We congratulate the shortlisted companies and look forward to a fruitful collaboration for innovation in the coming months.The shortlisted companies and their technology solutions are (sorted by alphabetical order):\xb7 Fixbot Vehicle diagnostics and inspection via OBD dongle in Nigeria\xb7 Microfuse Affordable plugin computers for the education sector in Uganda\xb7 Neural Labs Africa Ltd Deep learning and computer vision for healthcare diagnosis in Kenya and Senegal\xb7 QuadLoop Leveraging e-waste for solar e-Lanterns and battery storage in Nigeria.