The Design Thinking and Innovation Hub (D-Hub) of the University of Cape Coast and the Kosmos Innovation Center (KIC), have organised the southwest zonal KIC AgricTech Challenge Classic 2023 for young entrepreneurs of UCC and the Takoradi Technical University.
About 37 business startups pitched their business ideas to a panel of judges known in the competition as the Ideation Team.
The successful teams will get seed funding of $50,000 to enable them to operationalize their business ideas.
In all, 15 successful teams from 10 participating universities will join 15 other setups at the “Pro level” to battle for the main prize.
The Director of D-Hub, Dr. Karen Naa Abaka Arthur, in a brief remark, noted that the competition gives credence to the University of Cape Coast’s vision of becoming a global entrepreneurial university.
“We believe that this partnership allows us to tread the same course and to support entrepreneurship and career development among the youth to create more jobs,” she said.
One of the teams pitching their business idea at the challenge
She expressed admiration for the innovative ideas of the young entrepreneurs and was of the hope that the agricultural sector would receive the needed support systems to expand.
The entrepreneurship development specialist at Kosmos Innovation Centre, Mr. Ato Ulzen-Appiah, said the competition will offer the young entrepreneurs the requisite training to build their ideas and businesses.
He explained that KIC would continuously “train, transform, support and invest in young entrepreneurs working within the agricultural space.”
According to him, the training would enable young entrepreneurs to build innovative and commercially driven solutions that were solving problems in the agric sector.
“They have resources, we have expertise that we can use, and we have access to a lot of students. So, we believe that this partnership allows us to tread the same force and to support entrepreneurship and career development among today’s youth to create more jobs,” she said.
The other universities participating in the challenge include the University of Ghana (UG), SD Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (SDD-UBIDS, University for Development Studies (UDS), and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). The rest are Ho Technical University (HTU), Bolgatanga Technical University (BTU), Koforidua Technical University (KTU), and the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR).
KIC
The Kosmos Innovation Centre is a not-for-profit organisation that invests and supports young entrepreneurs and small businesses with viable ideas in the agriculture value chain.
It trains and builds capacities through the Agritech Challenge programme, incubates and supports businesses through the KIC incubator and accelerates small businesses for investor readiness through the KIC Business Booster.
Since the inception of the programme in 2016, four cohorts (AgriTechies or teams) have gone through the KIC AgriTech Challenge.
Source: Documentation and Information Section-UCC