Toufoula Kids Wins Tunisia Edition Of DEMO Africa Innovation Tour
Following the successful hosting of the Moroccan leg of its Innovation Tour; an event which as reported by WeeTracker, culminated in the emergence of Moroccan eHealth startup, Moldiag, as eventual winners, DEMO Africa has rounded off on its Northern Africa tours with the latest event in Tunisia being one of two curtain-drawers.
According to a press statement released on behalf of the program by Sipho Mhlope, External Communications Officer DEMO Africa, earlier this week, the Tunisian edition of the DEMO Africa Innovation Tour was the product of concerted efforts and tandem work between the organization and Flat6Labs Tunis; the Tunisian arm of the renowned MENA accelerator.
Fending off stiff competition from the rest of the chasing pack and having seen off competition from four other startups that made it through to the second round of pitching, Toufoula Kids emerged winners of the Tunisian tour in an event that has been described as astounding in many circles. The Tunisian startup is a multi-language Ludo-educational platform offered in Arabic, French, and English for children aged between four to ten. The mobile application is linked to a smart printed magazine linked together by Augmented Reality (AR) with a view to reducing the addiction of children to screens. Amongst other teams that made it to the top five of the competition were HawKar, eTaxi, Naviacom, and Logis.
The event witnessed the coming together of a number of heavyweights in both the local and global entrepreneurial landscape with such names as Samantha Stein; Director TechCrunch Battlefield, Haroun Aouini; Ecosystem Lead at Amen Bank, Yehia Houry; Managing Director Flat6Labs, Afef Ajengui; Program Officer at Cogite, and Aymen Touhent, CEO and Founder Switch.io, amongst the notable personalities that formed the jury for the competition which saw twelve promising startups slug it out with pitches in front of the panel of judges.
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As spelled out in the press release, Awalef Mosbeh; a representative of eventual winners Toufoula Kids, is quoted as saying; “This product is the answer to a lack of digital content in the Arabic language which is only 3% compared to a strong demand of 60% in the MENA regions. Toufoula Kids is not only a learning tool for children at home but also a tool for developing fun concept ideas and for raising awareness with partners who target children and their immediate environment.”
The winners of the Tunisian edition of the DEMO Africa Innovation Tour, alongside their North African counterparts from Morocco and Egypt, in the form of Moldiag and Chefaa, will now proceed to Morocco for the pan-African finals scheduled for October. The final is expected to feature successful startups in each region who automatically qualify to be part of the initial pool of 30, from where the winning startup(s) will be selected. The participating startups will be looking to do battle for incentives believed to be worth up to USD 150 K, including USD 120 K worth of software tools from Microsoft, and USD 15 K from AWS. This is expected to help further the growth of the businesses.
DEMO Africa is one of the flagship initiatives of Lions@frica that has set its sights on connecting African startups to the global ecosystem. The DEMO Africa stage offers a platform for the most ingenious and inventive companies across Africa to launch their products and provide solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems.
