CTA Project Completion Report: AgriHack Talent: Focus on Pitch AgriHack

Abstract

CTA’s AgriHack Talent initiative aimed to strengthen youth-led digital innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. It was a key part of CTA’s strategy to encourage youth’s meaningful involvement in agriculture and promote youth employment and agricultural transformation through innovations.
Co-designed with young innovators and partners, the AgriHack Talent project included:
• competitions to develop information and communication technology (ICT) applications for agriculture (hackathons) when there is a need
• a start-up competition (called Pitch AgriHack) targeting young companies already offering e-agriculture services
• capacity building, mentorship and incubation opportunities
• promotional and networking opportunities
• facilitation of access to grants and investments to scale-up services offered.

The project was launched in 2013 when a regional agricultural hackathon was organised in the framework of the international ICT4Ag conference that CTA organised in Rwanda. It was probably the first initiative of its kind at the international level targeting Africa. The hackathon targeted East Africa only, leveraging on the stronger development of digitalisation in that region. Hackathons were then organised annually until 2015.
From 2016, the project focused on start-ups that already owned digital solutions as many prototypes were already in existence and needed support to grow. This was the launch of Pitch AgriHack. Four editions of Pitch AgriHack were organised. The 2016 edition covered all ACP countries, the 2017 edition focused on West Africa and the last two editions organised in 2018 and 2019 again covered all ACP countries. For these last two editions, CTA put young women’s digital entrepreneurship at the core of the project and 50% of finalists and winners were women-led businesses.