Total SA last week announced the winners of the South African leg of its Startupper of the Year Challenge, which runs in 34 African countries and seeks to identify, assist, and reward innovative start-ups that have the potential to contribute to local development.
The first prize among SA start-ups went to Nkazimulo Applied Sciences, which seeks to boost secondary school learners' interaction with the physical sciences by giving them ways to learn and experiment at home. Nkazimulo Applied Sciences creates chemistry kits enabling 52 different experiments that are safe for execution within a home environment, with the aim of helping learners gain a better understanding of the high school curriculum and apply their scientific knowledge to everyday life.
"I attended a 'disadvantaged' secondary school in KwaZulu-Natal and we did not have any science kits. I wanted to pursue a career in chemistry and my first year in tertiary showed me that I was way over my head, not because I did not have the ability, but I would be playing catch-up my whole tertiary life," said co-founder Bathabile Mpofu. "I want to change this for all students in South Africa."
Nkazimulo Applied Sciences, also co-founded by Roderick Mpofu, won R600 000 from Total to develop the project.
Second prize was carried away by Senovate, a business started by product developer Themba Sehawu, that markets a fruit-picking machine that looks to improve safety and efficiency in the harvesting process for SA's large agriculture sector. The fruit-picking machine allows users to pick fruit without elevating themselves, and can pick, prune and place fruit. Senovate was awarded R350 000.
In third place came ConnectMed, a telemedicine platform broadly tailored to the current medical and technological landscape of the African continent. ConnectMed, co-founded by Oyena Zwelijongile Gwebityala, Melissa McCoy, Smisosenkosi Skosana, and Sekeitto Allan-Roy, walked away with R250 000.
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