Orange-SL Dishes Out Le.150 M to OSVP Winners

By Francis Kamara

The leading Mobile Telecommunication in Sierra Leone, Orange-SL, has on 1^st September 2022, dished out the sum of Le. 150 million Hundred to the winners of the Orange Social Venture Prize (OSVP) 2022. The ceremony was held at the Orange-SL headquarters at IMATT.

The Orange Social Venture Prize (OSVP) is an entrepreneurship program that supports the most innovative business idea from young people in Sierra Leone.

This is the fourth edition of the OSVP and the winner of this year’s grand prize will represent Sierra Leone in the OSVP International competition.

The 1^st winner Osman Yaah, of the Auto-Smart irrigation and energy company SL Ltd is the winner of the grand prize of one hundred million Leones (100,000). Whilst Adeola Carew of Safe space S/L won the Tech-Queen prize of Fitty million Leones (Le50,000).

The idea behind the OSVP is to help finance the most innovative business ideas from young people in Sierra Leone, the CEO of Orange Shakou Amadu Bah said to the audience.

In his statement, the Orange-SL CEO, Sekou Amadou Bah, acknowledged that Orange-SL is positioned to be the lead digital partner for start-ups in Africa and the Middle East, and this is why OSVP was initiated 12 years ago to reward the best technological project with positive impact and solutions to social challenges, mainly in the fields of education, health, agriculture, mobile payment or sustainable development in Africa and the Middle East.

He added that Orange-SL, as a brand, continues to impact directly the lives of people by giving back and touching lives, as they believe in the philosophy of philanthropy. He went on to say that since the inception of the OSVP in Sierra Leone, it has become a household name and a reference partner in ICT development and start-ups – he underscored that in 2021, they included an additional prize to increase female participation and to promote project, offering a technological solution to improve the lives and conditions of women. He stated that the pitch session displayed is part of Orange’s innovation strategy, which is committed to providing financial support and putting expertise in the development of new businesses using ICT”.

The winner of the 100,000 prizes, Osman Yaah, founder and CEO of Autosmart irrigation Company SL Limited pitched an innovative business idea that facilitates the use of mobile phones to provide water for farms from any part of the world thereby creating the first digital agricultural irrigation system in Sierra Leone. Auto-smart irrigation is a locally made solution that helps farmers to carry out year-round cultivation.

“With this system, you don’t need to wait for the rainy season you can even farm during the dries. Triple your harvest per year,” he said.

He highlighted that with 70% of arable land yet we can’t able to feed ourselves. He emphasized that Sierra Leone can only achieve food security and end hunger if we practice sustainable agriculture and mechanized farming.

Adeola Carew, founder and CEO of Safe Space SL, caught the attention of the local and international judges as she pitched a business idea that aims at breaking Sierra Leone’s culture of silence on reproductive issues and creating a community in which people feel safe to share their problems without fear of stigma or shame and get to find solutions through the creation of a sexual reproductive center and a special Mobile App to facilitate the process.

In her own submission over her pitch, Adeola Carew asserted that “There is limited information about Sexual reproduction in this country, Teenage pregnancy and maternal mortality, but if we use technology it will be easy to access information for instance if you are being raped, you can easily access a resource point with your phone where you can access contacts for the nearest police station and also an expert that will help you fight your case. So all of these can be effective.” As a creative entrepreneur, Carew also doubles as a poet, writer and sex-positive advocate.