First Agritech Award: The Milken Institute, Motsepe Foundation Announce Winners

The Milken Institute and the Motsepe Foundation have announced the winners of the Milken-Motsepe Prize in AgriTech. This is the first of a series of a multi-year, multi-million-dollar innovation competitions, to advance technological progress towards the United Nations, U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The prizes were awarded at the Milken Institute in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

NOVFEED, a biotech company based in Tanzania, was awarded the $1 million grand prize for its proprietary technology to ‘upcycle’ organic waste into nutritious, sustainable, and traceable plant-based protein ingredients, and concentrated natural bio-fertiliser for the food system.

The $300,000 award for second place was presented to KARPOLAX, a Uganda-based company, for its nano-technology solution that helps fruits and vegetables stay fresh longer, without losing nutritional value. The $150,000 award for third place was presented to IRRI-AfricaRice, for its biotech innovation to help rice farmers protect their crops from flooding, one of the most damaging effects of climate change.

Bonus prizes of $100,000 each were also announced. KURONGA, based in South Africa, took the bonus prize for the most creative use of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies for its machine learning and machine vision mobile app. The app involves using Artificial Intelligence, AI, to connect farmers with buyers and making it easier to validate the quality of crops.

COOL LION, a Côte d’Ivoire-based start-up that provides cooling-as-a-service solution for different industries including agriculture, fisheries etc, and powered by renewable energy, took home the People’s Choice bonus prize for the most transformative idea according to the public.

Dr. Precious Moloi-Motsepe, co-founder and CEO of the Motsepe Foundation said, “Varied solutions were considered during the competition, and this contributes to current and future efforts to understand and resolve challenges facing agriculture. Making progress towards the SDGs is crucial. We are truly impressed by the participants’ ideas and thank each of them for their dedication to finding viable and scalable solutions.”

“The winners exemplify the fact that bold, scalable, transformative ideas can come from anywhere,” said Dr. Emily Musil Church, Senior Director at the Milken Institute Centre for Strategic Philanthropy. “Bringing talent to the fore and supporting entrepreneurs is an intentional goal of the competition. It doesn’t end there. The expanded network of investors and stakeholders built into the programme, offers the winning teams continued opportunities to innovate and thrive.”

After launching the competition in April 2021, more than 3,300 people from 105 countries across six continents registered for the Milken-Motsepe Prize in AgriTech. An independent panel of expert judges carefully selected 25 finalist teams to receive $10,000 each, to develop and test their innovations to improve economic value for small and medium-sized farms in Africa.

The Teams also received a variety of special benefits, including participation in a tuition-free, experiential learning programme, offered by Global Innovation Catalysts, in collaboration with Stanford Online, where they received mentoring from industry experts, pitch coaching and feedback sessions.