The 2013 Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) is now officially open for applications. IPA honours innovations from across Africa
“Our focus is the future we innovate. It’s based on the core belief that the best way to predict the future is to create it. It is a call to action across Africa,” Ms. Aida Opoku-Mensah, Director of the ICT, Science and Technology Division (ISTD) of the Economic Commission for Africa, said.
She further stated she expects the prize to benefit young people across Africa who have embraced the ICT, and other science fields.
The programme is looking for “market potential, impact, scalability, originality, utility and technical aspects and informed journalists.”
Some of the objectives for the programme are:
- Mobilize leaders from all sectors to fuel African innovation;
- Promote innovation across Africa in key sectors of interest through the competition;
- Promote science, technology and engineering as rewarding, exciting and noble career options among the youth in Africa by profiling success applicants; and
- Encourage entrepreneurs, innovators, funding bodies and business development service providers to exchange ideas and explore innovative business opportunities
Selected judges will scrutinize every entry and release the names of the nominees. The nominees will then go for a final round to select the top three winning projects. The shortlisted candidates will be announced in November with the winners unveiled in April 2013.
The prize for the winning proposal is pegged at US$100,000 with the two runners up bagging US$25,000 each.
The deadline for applications is on October 18, 2012 without any possibility of extension, the organization said.
Last year, 458 applications were from 38 countries in Africa. Egyptian engineer, Mohammed Sanad had his winning project of creating a base-station antenna that can facilitate upgrades to more advanced mobile networks in developing countries, in last year’s prize.
