Afcacia

Innovators from four African countries will for apply a grant award in a $1 million (Sh132.4 million) kitty known as the Africa Online Safety Fund (AOSF) organised by South African-based capital advisory firm Impact Amplifier (IA) with financial backing from Google.

The applicants are from Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. They are tasked with coming up with solutions to emerging technological challenges such as cyber bullying and harassment, terrorist recruitment and promotion, fake news and financial scams among others.

Impact Amplifier says while uptake of internet in Africa has tremendously grown over the past decade, creating new economic and social opportunities, a new set of challenges have arisen. These challenges, it said, need innovative solutions to resolve them.

“There are three categories of funding: Transformative, Maturing and Catalytic. The Transformative projects are intended to be larger in scale, reach multiple geographies and/ or potentially large numbers of beneficiaries, and be scalable as a solution,” said Impact Amplifier in a statement.

“The Maturing projects are intended to test ideas at a larger scale, try new ideas within existing projects, and reach new audiences while the Catalytic projects are intended to be smaller, targeted, and potentially only locally or culturally specific.”

Transformative projects, the firm said, will attract a maximum grant of $50,000 (Sh6.6 million), while “Maturing” and “Catalytic” projects will bag up to $25,000 (Sh3.3 million) and $10,000 (Sh1.3 million) respectively.

The applications will close on April 30, with the shortlisted candidates expected to be announced by May 31 before the unveiling of finalists by July 15.

Now in its second leg since its launch last year, the programme saw a total of 26 organisations receive grants with the first cohort of winners coming from Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa.

Over 520 million people on the continent, which translates to 40 percent of the population, today have access to the web, with the internet economy projected to contribute nearly $180 billion (Sh23.8 trillion) to Africa’s economy by 2025.