Two African early-stage companies came out tops at the grand finale of the world’s biggest independent competition for startups.
The rise of the African techpreneur on the global stage was evident in the announcement of the overall winners of the 2022 Global Startups Awards (GSA), considered the world’s gold standard for startups.
Two of these, Kubik and Emata, were recognised for their world-class skills and innovation at the GSA’s gala event.
Kubik, last year’s GSA Africa ‘Startup of the Year’ and winner of the ‘ESG Tech’ category, took first place in the GSA’s Startup of the Year category. The environmental technology company from Ethiopia turns plastic waste into low-carbon, low-cost buildings. Their environmentally friendly alternative building materials are designed to interlock, thereby circumventing the need for costly and polluting materials.
Emata was announced the Best Newcomer. By providing them with affordable digital loans, the Ugandan fintech company is revolutionising how smallholder farmers access financing. Not only has this startup automated the entire loan process from data collection and credit scoring to loan disbursement, they also cater for small and remote farmers by offering loans as small as UGX 60 000 ($15).

The Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) of the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Fiona Evans, officially opened the ‘Providing Opportunities for Women’s Economic Rise (POWER) Pitch Showcase,’ featuring six women in business.
Following an open and competitive selection process, six businesses were chosen for the POWER Pitch Showcase and pitched their ideas: FreelanSira, Jemla Online, Kabana Leather, Green Ethiopia, Beki Farms, and JRS. During her opening remarks, DCM Evans said, “For some of the businesses tonight, the owners are ready to take on external investment. For others, they are looking for new customers, new markets, or new business plan advice. The U.S. private sector, represented tonight by American Chamber of Commerce Board President Daryl Wilson and AmCham board members in the audience, leads the world in innovation and holds the answers to many of their questions.”
She also encouraged the event attendees to show their support by meeting the entrepreneurs, asking follow-up questions, or offering words of advice or encouragement.

With financial, health and climate shocks threatening to reverse two decades of development progress in Africa, experts have called for urgent concessionary financing to help the continent build resilience and boost economic growth.
A mix of shocks including food and fuel impact of the Russia-Ukraine war, climate change impacts, conflict, and tighter global financial conditions have increased Africa’s development financing gap and debt vulnerability, experts concurred during a one-day virtual workshop on Catalysing Access to the IMF Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST), organized by AfriCatalyst and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).
ECA Director, Macroeconomics and Governance Division, Adam Elhiraika said that in the past six decades, every global recession has led to a rise in global government debt and that many African countries had increased their public debt. A bulk of the public debt was incurred between 2020 and 2021 when countries sought to combat the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As a result, many countries were struggling with high debt and in servicing it which was impeding poverty reduction and hindering their recovery from shocks.

Huawei announced its ‘Non Stop Banking’ initiative. Unveiled at the Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit for Africa 2023, the initiative calls for hand-in-hand collaboration between the ICT and banking industries and facilitate a digital future of ‘non-stop’ services, ‘non-stop’ development, and ‘non-stop’ innovation.
In a keynote speech announcing the initiative, Leo Chen, president of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa Region spoke about why going digital has become such a major imperative for the banking industry. Not only does it make it easier for banks to broaden their customer base, he said, it also saves operational costs, allows them to develop new products, and deepen the customer relationship, thus generating revenues for banks.
In Africa, he added, there’s an even greater imperative for banks to embrace digitization, as it allows for greater financial inclusion. While Chen lauded the innovative work done by many African banks in embracing digitization, he pointed out that all players in the industry need to go further if they’re to embrace the ‘non-stop’ approach that will characterise the future of banking.