Orange Botswana has rewarded the best innovative and socially responsible youth business projects in the 9th edition of Orange Social Venture Prize last Thursday.
Rudisang Morake and Lame Morake won the competition and walked away with P50 000 each while Mmoloki Pitse came second and won P30 000 and Timothy Ngwenya came third winning P20 000.
The platform rewards innovative projects based on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which aim to improve the living conditions of people in Africa and the Middle East.
This is in fields such as education, healthcare, agriculture, mobile payments and sustainable development.
It is designed to reward the best innovative and socially responsible business projects, scrutinized greatly for their merit.
Speaking at the awards ceremony, Orange Chief Executive Officer, Dr Patrick Benon said Orange committed to growing and inculcating a culture of innovative thinking and solution-driven approaches to boost socio-economic progress in Botswana.
He said Social Venture Prize, rewards start-ups that utilise digital technologies to change and improve the lives of the community, specifically, targeting areas of education, healthcare, agriculture and commerce.
Benon said the main objective of this competition is to unearth digital solutions that can solve existing social problems.
“After these awards, Orange Botswana engages the winners to assist them technically to develop the winning ideas into operational businesses. We coach the winners, invest time and financial resources to bring the ideas to life. We are proud to announce that we already have 2 start-ups being (Brastone of Mpotsa and Magric and Connexus of Atlega) which were selected and assisted through this process and they are now fully operational and highly successful,” said Benon.
The CEO said the Social venture Prize, provides a platform for empowerment of youth businesses and creates the much needed jobs for the youth.
He said as Orange Botswana they are committed and passionate about empowering the youth to drive and create jobs that leverages on technology and digital.