Milken-Motsepe FinTech Prize Announces 10 Semifinalists
The Milken Institute, a US-based nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank focusing on economic and policy solutions and the Motsepe Foundation, a South African-owned foundation that focuses on initiatives and projects to alleviate poverty and improve sustainable living have selected 10 semifinalists advancing to the semifinal round of their Innovation Prize Program, the Milken-Motsepe FinTech Prize.
These teams, featuring nine 9 African startups out of the ten, have been awarded USD 100 K each to develop solutions that aim to enhance financial inclusion in emerging and frontier markets.
The FinTech Prize, a global initiative, seeks to address the financial challenges faced by underserved populations by promoting innovative ideas that offer increased access to financial tools.
These solutions are expected to create a sustainable impact by improving access to credit, enhancing payment systems, and offering other financial services essential for economic growth in these markets.
“By supporting these pioneering teams, we aim to foster financial inclusion and empower entrepreneurs who drive economic growth and opportunities in their communities,” Emily Musil, senior director of Milken Institute noted. He emphasized that the prizes help identify, support, and celebrate talent to ignite the entrepreneurial spirit and empower visionaries to turn their ideas for a better future into reality.
The 10 startups operating across nearly 30 countries across 2 continents include:
▪️ AZA Finance (Kenya): A B2B FinTech platform offering affordable, efficient financial services like payments and currency exchange.
▪️ Chapa (Ethiopia): A payment gateway simplifying payment processing integration for businesses through a developer-friendly API.
▪️ Chumz (Kenya): A gamified savings product that encourages individuals to save through behavioral psychology techniques.
▪️ Farmpawa (Uganda): A crowd-farming platform connecting investors with farming assets, driving sustainable agricultural growth.
▪️ Flow Global (UK): A liquidity engine for retail merchants, providing working capital solutions to boost growth in the digital economy.
▪️ Paycloud by Lipa Later (Kenya): A digital banking platform tackling late payments with seamless payment processing and financial tools.
▪️Nyla Bank (Ghana): Africa’s first digital Islamic bank, offering Shariah-compliant financial services for ethical banking.
▪️ Oze (Ghana): A lending platform that helps small businesses access credit through digitized financial data for banks.
▪️ Trade Lenda (Nigeria): A platform providing fast loans and micro-savings tailored to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
▪️Verto (UK): A cross-border payments platform for businesses, handling 49 currencies and eliminating intermediary fees.
These teams will spend the next few months refining and scaling their solutions, which will be assessed for their ability to foster financial inclusion on a global scale.
The semifinalists will go on to present their solutions at the Milken Institute’s Middle East and Africa Summit in Abu Dhabi in December 2024. The pitches will be evaluated based on their potential to provide impactful, scalable, and sustainable financial inclusion solutions.
The top three teams will advance to the final round, where they will compete for a USD 1 M grand prize, which will be awarded at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference in Los Angeles in May 2025. The total prize pool amounts to USD 2 M including a USD 1 M Grand Prize.
The ultimate goal of the prize is to identify breakthrough innovations that will make financial tools and services more accessible to underserved populations.
