The Sustainable Development Department of the African Region at the World Bank Ag Observatory is launching Three Challenges to find innovative tools to reduce economic losses and food insecurity.

The World Bank is the largest organization aimed to help developing countries around the world. One of the directions of the World Bank is agriculture to end extreme poverty.

Extreme weather, plant and livestock pests and diseases forces to look for alternative ways to improve yield collection and protect farmers.

InnMind, an international network for startups and investors with headquarters in Switzerland, became an official partner of this initiative, aiming to invite and select the best startups from InnMind network to join the challenges and compete for the main award.

The World Bank supported by InnMind is launching Three challenges to find proposals from innovative startups and entrepreneurs to achieve these goals:

• Develop alternative ways to measure weather variables. Weather data is essential to strengthen the financial resilience of farmers to climatic shocks. More information about this challenge here;
• Provide alternative solutions to prevent plant and animal disease outbreaks. Consideration of all data inputs, such as social media, weather, movements of other vectors, will help to stop sparking and spreading of the diseases. More information about this challenge here;
• Present time series of agriculture data (yield, price, production), data for crops relevant to the SADC region in an electronic format. Novel techniques of data collection can leap-frog traditional methods and expand the scope and availability of risk financing instruments for farmers. More information about this challenge here;

The winners will present their projects to experts, get media support, attend an award ceremony in Washington DC with all expenses paid, and receive awards from the World Bank, InnMind and other partners and sponsors.

Startups and innovators who want to participate should apply before April 2nd, 2020.

More information about Innovation Challenges and application form here.

Partners & Sponsors

The World Bank’s Agriculture Intelligence Observatory harnesses publicly available data as well as data provided by a privately-operated platform to get ahead of the next crisis and better advise developing countries in a changing climate.

Draper University is a private, for-profit school focused on teaching entrepreneurship, located in San Mateo, California. The school has 500+ alumni from 50 countries and has launched 280+ startups that have raised $51M+ in funding from venture investors.

InnMind, a global ecosystem for startups and investors, aggregates the power of business network, useful acceleration tools, fundraising help, media support and other services to facilitate startup business growth.

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