Rwandese Christelle Kwizera, whose company ‘ ‘Water Access’ manage water points across Rwanda, so that users are always guaranteed safe water at all fetching points, took third place in Jack Ma’s inaugural Africa Netpreneur Prize contest over the weekend, an official source revealed in Kigali.
Kwizera pitched her way to a $100,000 cash prize in Accra, Ghana over the course of eight months, emerging among the best out about 10,000 other applicants from 50 of Africa’s 54 countries to be named “Africa’s Business Hero.
Established in 2014, the mission of ”Water Access’ has been to provide clean water access to over 132,000 individuals, schools, business and farms in Rwanda and across the borders in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi and Uganda.
In addition, Water Access Rwanda has the social responsibility to eradicate water scarcity in Rwanda by providing safe water access points to communities that previously lacked, it said.
Ma was inspired to create the contest during his first trip to Africa, in 2017, after meeting entrepreneurs who he said had the same energy and passion that he had when launching Alibaba nearly 20 years before.
While few people were willing or able to help Ma and his team in 1999, he said that he was now in a position to help Africa’s entrepreneurs and committed to doing so.
The Netpreneur Prize – which is put on by Ma’s philanthropic organization, the Jack Ma Foundation, and four African partners – will award $1 million a year for the next 10 years to support the small businesses, grassroots communities and women-founded enterprises that are growing the continent’s nascent digital economy.
The annual pitch competition is open to entrepreneurs who are nationals from any of the 54 African countries, and all industry sectors are eligible.
CU/as/APA