Winner Of The MTN Entrepreneurship Challenge Walked Out With $25,000

 MTN, in partnership with the MTN Solution

Space at the University of Cape Town

Graduate School of Business and Jumia, are

proud to announce that team MedRX from

Ghana emerged as the winner of the

inaugural MTN Entrepreneurship Challenge

powered by Jumia.

The Pan-African competition, which launched on

February 15, 2016, came down to the wire on Friday,

May 27, 2016 at the MTN Entrepreneurship Festival

held at Philippi Village in Cape Town. The three

finalists from Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania faced a

panel of experienced business leaders comprising

Jérémy Hodara, co-CEO Africa Internet Group,

Professor Walter Baets, Director of the University of

Cape Town Graduate School of Business and Herman

Singh, MTN Group Chief Digital Officer, as they

battled it out for the US $25 000 cash prize to start-

up their own unique business.

The three finalists had to pitch their unique digital

application or smart solution to combat a challenge

faced in Africa and it was Victoria Acheampong,

Hayford Brako and Yannick Kabu Bosomprah from

team MedRX from Ghana who received top honours.

The judges concurred that MedRX had the best

online to offline capability, meaning that one can go

online to get services offline. “We really were

impressed with the width of their functionality and

the depth of the integration of the application,

handling a very complex challenge that actually

delivered astonishingly great human value,” said

Herman Singh, Chief Digital Officer from the MTN

Group.

The winning application aims to connect patients,

doctors and healthcare professionals like it has

never been seen before. The application is an

interactive health platform for all users who have

health needs and it connects all users to health

personnel from various fields of practice including

hospital, pharmacy, laboratory and academia. “It’s

like having a pharmacy on your phone and having

access to medication,” says Victoria Acheampong

from Team MedRX.

The winner also walked away with a year-long

partnership with Jumia, a Facebook Start Program

to the value of US $15 000 and the opportunity to be

incubated at the MTN Solution Space at the

University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business

and at Jumia. Team MedRX will have access to

world-class marketing teams, mentors to help them

along and the environment and structure to be

successful.

Bankole Cardoso, the Head of Communications at

Africa Internet Group added, “MedRX is a very

exciting business model and the team members

complement each other very well. This business is

going to be an African success story.”

The runners up, team Pass.ng from Nigeria received

US $5 000 towards their business. Their solution is

a web, desktop and mobile-based application based

on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy that focuses on

examination preparatory and testing that will assist

candidates to excel in all the major Nigerian

Examinations and tests. Samson Abioye from

Pass.Ng added, “We have always wanted to scale our

presence across Africa. While we did not win the

prize, this challenge has given us the exposure and

the access to key partners who will help us make our

presence felt in more countries across Africa”.

This ‘first of its kind’ challenge in Africa aimed to

boost entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as

stronger and more sustainable businesses on the

continent. It involved a total of 26 countries, 61

Universities and 1529 applicants across the African

continent, which included 734 big ideas, 30 hours of

live pitching over seven days in 11 countries, 411

hours of judging to determine the finalists and the

winner of the MTN Entrepreneurship Challenge

powered by Jumia.