Agriculture Entrepreneur Wins $25,000 2016 Anzisha Grand Prize for African Youth Entrepreneurship
Heritiaina Randriamananatahina, a 22 year-old agriculture entrepreneur from Madagascar, has won $25,000 Grand Prize in the sixth annual edition of Africa’s premier award for youth entrepreneurship.
Heritiaina is the founder of Fiombonana, an agro-processing enterprise that manufactures dairy products and confectioneries using only Malagasy raw materials, employing farmers and providing local job opportunities. Heritiaina was selected from a competitive pool of diverse entrepreneurs from all over Africa.
The Anzisha Prize first runner-up was environmental entrepreneur Yaye Souadou Fall, 21, from Senegal (received $15,000) while agricultural entrepreneur N’guessan Koffi Jacques Olivier, 19, from Côte d’Ivoire was the second runner-up (received $12,500).
The first runner up for the prize, Yaye Souadou from Senegal and founder of E-cover, is also the first Senegalese entrepreneur ever in the top three in the history of Anzisha Prize.
N’guessan Koffi Jacques Olivier from Côte d’Ivoire is the remarkable second runner-up who founded Yaletite Entrepreneurship Group CI. Yaletite Entrepreneurship Group CI is an agricultural group with the aim of producing and selling chocolate and food crops for profit and mobilizing youth for agricultural employment.
The Anzisha Prize is a partnership between African Leadership Academy and The MasterCard Foundation. The 12 Anzisha Prize finalists were hand-picked from an applicant pool of 550 entrepreneurs from 32 African countries. Now in its sixth year, Anzisha Prize celebrated these outstanding young people at an exclusive, invitation-only ceremony on Tuesday 25 October 2016 in Johannesburg. The 12 finalists presented their ventures to a panel of judges after spending 10 days in a business accelerator camp to strengthen business fundamentals. They join a now 67 strong pool of Anzisha Fellows and will receive ongoing business-consulting support, access to experts, and access to networking opportunities to enable sustainable venture growth.
Applications for the next cycle of the Anzisha Prize will open on 15 February in 2017. Nominations for promising youth entrepreneurs are welcome all year round.
