Local startup Brastorne Enterprises has won the Heifer International Prize for innovation for smallholder agriculture at the MIT Solve Challenge Finals 2022.
The Heifer International Prize for innovation for smallholder agriculture recognizes solutions that support smallholder farmers to grow and scale their businesses and protect them from the adverse effects of climate change.
The prize is funded by Heifer International, an international development organization on a mission to end hunger and poverty in a sustainable way by supporting and investing alongside local farmers and their communities.
Brastorne was announced as the winner together with Hiveonline. Winners of the prize will receive $250,000.
Speaking on the prize, Naledi Magowe, co-founder and Chief Growth Officer of Brastorne stated "Our journey with MIT as a Solver team has been truly rewarding.[...]we are so excited to work with Heifer and Solve to expand our impact and mandate of connecting the unconnected small holder farmers in Africa."
Solve is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a mission to drive innovation to solve world challenges and enable marketplace for social impact innovation.
Through open innovation challenges, Solve finds incredible tech-based social entrepreneurs all around the world. Solve then brings together MIT’s innovation ecosystem and a community of Members to fund and support these entrepreneurs to help them drive lasting, transformational impact.
Brastorne, which has developed several products including "mAgri" which is a USSD application that allows farmers to market their produce across the country ,was also recently selected for the Google Black Founders Fund program.