Mobile tech offers solutions to social challenges
The web competition was held with the aim of supporting young entrepreneurs who are tackling social challenges in Africa and promoting business alliances and investments in the African tech startup market by Japanese companies. Digital services and tech businesses have been dramatically expanding in Africa in the last 5 years as mobile phones and low-cost smartphones became very common in the Continent. The amount of investments in African startups reached $2 billion in 2019, which was almost the same as in Southeast Asia several years ago, before startup investment expanded in the region, even though the amounts declined to $1.4 billion in 2020 because of the spread of Covid-19. This is the reason JICA decided to support valuable startups in Africa via project NINJA business competition in which more than 2,700 companies from African countries applied to compete. And Nikkei, the most influential financial media group in Japan, cooperated with JICA to promote the final pitch contest among Japanese business community, which doesn’t really have much interest in Africa. Mr. Mutsuo Iwai, the head of the project team for African development at Keizai Doyukai (Japan Association of Corporate Executives) said it is crucial for Japanese companies to have close partnerships with African startups to solve social challenges in Africa and to implement the sustainable growth of the world economy.