The Afri-Plastics Challenge is now down to the wire. Ten teams of innovators from across sub-Saharan Africa have made it to the finals in strand 2 of the challenge named Creating Solutions, aimed at reducing plastic usage across the continent. The finalists will receive £75,000 to invest in and develop their ideas. Next year, a winner will take home a first prize of £750,000, with the runner up receiving £250,000 and third placed winning £100,000.
Across the continent lies a pool of innovative talent as exemplified by the regional distribution of the finalists, who were drawn from Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. They included a Rwandan organization Toto Safi, whose solution also named Toto Safi, is an app-based service that facilitates the reduction of single-use disposable diapers, a major source of land and marine pollution. Through this app, parents will be able to receive a fresh bundle of clean and sterilised cloth diapers at an affordable cost.
Also catching the judges’ eye and attention was ShoppersBag, a solution developed by a Nigerian organization known as Well of Science. Shoppersbags are re-usable, recyclable and biodegradable bags that allow people to get paid or earn rewards on every usage. Other contenders in the race include South Africa’s Regenize. Regenize’s Zero-Waste Spaza can plug into any existing spaza shop and enables it to become a zero-waste shop where their customers can shop without creating plastic waste. The customers will need to bring their containers to purchase goods supplied by Regenize and stored in secured food-safe containers. Besides reducing plastic waste, it will also enable customers to live a healthier lifestyle.
What’s next for the finalists?
The finalists in the second strand announced today are also being supported by a bespoke capacity-building portfolio of experts innovation, commercialisation, narrative-building, plastics to develop their innovative products that specifically reduce or eliminate plastic entering the value chain through ingenious and novel approaches.
The successful community-centered products and services have demonstrated a sustainable approach to reducing the reliance on plastic that also supports the empowerment of women and girls. The Afri-Plastics Challenge’s goal is that the development of the innovators’ solutions will encourage the creation of new, sustainable local enterprises, bringing economic opportunity to communities, while creating solutions with application across sub-Saharan Africa and around the world.