Support the Africa Prize

If I look at the journey of Drop Access, from when we started in eastern Kenya as just a one room manufacturing facility, to growing into this big industry. I'm really, really grateful for the Africa Prize, they were first to believe in us even before we believed deeper in ourself. Drop Access is providing affordable and reliable cold chain, both in the healthcare and the food space.

So winning the Africa Prize in 2022 was quite transformational for us. Drop Access was still in the early stages of R&D, so being named the winner of the Africa Prize really just cemented our space in this industry. And from there, we've been able to scale our work in different African countries. In Rwanda, in Zambia, in Cote d'Ivoire and also in Tanzania.

It's really opened up a lot of opportunities to partner with so many organisations. So being part of the alumni network for the Africa Prize, has really been quite a game changing opportunity for us. I've created friendships.

Just knowing that there is another organisation going through the same challenges and the same wins, has really been encouraging for me. There’s mentorship that we get, we get support in even rebranding our organisations and doing our pitch decks.

Donors are a very big part of Africa Prize, and my message to them is, when you're building engineering innovation, takes years to actually get to product market fit. And most of that fund is R&D fund. And donors are the biggest contributors to R&D fund. So they have a rightful place to ensure that our innovations actually do come to reality.

Donors should be encouraged to contribute to this mission because through them, we're able to impact so many Africans. So I encourage you to donate to the Africa Prize programme.

Welcome to FlexiGyn, where we’re empowering women with control over their uterine health, by reducing costs by 50 times, removing the need for anaesthesia, and truly bringing connected gynaecology on demand.

We joined the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation in 2023, and we were fortunate to win it that year. We're in the women's healthcare space, which is often neglected and it was really a massive transformation of what we were trying to do, and having an opportunity to show people was amazing. And it helped us bring attention to a problem that we're trying to solve.

Best part of the Africa Prize alumni network is having a group of people who are going through the same problems you are, when you're struggling, when you're really feeling the heavy burden of what it is to be an entrepreneur, you can turn to those who have gone through those problems. It's actually people showing you exactly how to overcome those challenges.

I'm immensely grateful and thankful to the donors of the Africa Prize, because getting that first leg up in the space that we're in, medical devices is incredibly difficult. And having people who are there to back you and provide the means to help you start that journey in a really meaningful way is one of the best things that happened to us. So I would always encourage people to donate.

There's so many problems we face in the African continent. But for every one of those problems, there's an engineer, an entrepreneur, ready to solve it with their own innovation. So with the Africa Prize, we're directly supporting those engineers, showing the whole world that innovation can start right on our doorstep. So if ever there is a time to support the Africa Prize, it's right now.