Innovators and ecosystem builders: Meet the ITU Innovation Challenges winners
The second edition of the ITU Innovation Challenges, co-organized by EQUALS and INPUT Hungary, came to a close with the announcement of the winners. Building on the success of the first edition, the 2020 ITU Innovation Challenges were launched in May 2020, under the theme Rethinking the digital economy’s value chains during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The coronavirus crisis has reminded us how critical entrepreneurship-driven innovation is for economic growth and digital inclusion. More than ever, understanding how digital innovation can unlock communities’ innovative potential is key to economic growth and inclusion.
The 2020 winners were announced today in the following three categories:
• Digital Change-Maker: for ideas that create digital impact in communities, • Ecosystem Best Practice: for practices that nurture innovators and • Women in Tech: for projects that create positive change for women in their communities
Meet the 2020 winners
Past winners’ success stories
Johnathan Naidoo is a former Ecosystem Best Practice challenge winner and CEO of the Durban-based SmartXchange incubator. After winning, Naidoo was able to secure ZAR 120 million in funding from the South African Department of Small Business Development. This investment will enable him to better support South African innovators in developing and commercializing their products and services. Another success story is Denis Ogwang, a former Smart Communities challenge winner whose tech solution enabled his community to access clean water. Ogwang told ITU News that he was able to further refine his business model through his participation in the challenges’ co-creation process, as well as the physical boot camp and knowledge-sharing sessions that were organized for last year’s winners. Last but not least, Sara Berkai was a 2019 winner of the Digital Change-Maker challenge. Her participation in the challenge helped her build her storytelling and pitching skills, enabling her to better communicate her goals to stakeholders. Receiving feedback from other participants helped Berkai develop her business idea. Sara is now building Ambessa, a STEM toy kit company. For every kit purchased, a refugee child receives one free of cost. A unique competition for transformative change
The ITU Innovation Challenges are not your typical competition. They cater to change-makers with innovative ideas to transform their communities into digital societies and enable policymakers, ecosystem builders, innovators and resource partners to build a transformative experience for champions of competitive digital ecosystems. The challenges’ goal is to bridge the digital innovation divide by identifying innovators with solutions that accelerate national development priorities and ecosystem builders with practices that nurture innovators, and to empower them to transform their communities into thriving digital societies. Winners of the 2020 challenges will attend a five-day global flagship ITU event to learn, network, innovate and scale up their ideas. This will be preceded by a virtual boot camp for winners, who will participate in capacity-building workshops, refine their proposals with mentors and develop remarkable stories of their project. Last year’s winners attended one of two events: either the Young ICT Leaders’ Forum in Busan, Korea or ITU Telecom World, which took place in Budapest, Hungary. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our physical events have been replaced with a five-day immersive virtual event, the ITU Global Innovation Forum, to be held from 26 to 30 October 2020. The ITU Innovations Challenges are about empowering global communities to catalyze their digital development. To learn more about how problem, solution and resource owners can work together to bridge the digital innovation gap in your community, meet our winners and learn about their transformation journey. Read more about this year’s challenge and the winning ideas here.
Image credit: Sorapong Chaipanya via Pexels
