Jalule wins USD 20,000 Grant to support businesses of youth especially young women from the Africa Development Bank
Kampala – Uganda
Jalule, a solution whose business is to help local businesses in Uganda get more business was announced among the TOP 20 winners in Africa Development Bank’s #AfricaVsVirus challenge last Friday. Jalule will enable bussinesses to keep in touch with their customers, make new clients and increase sales through informed digital strategies.
In an event held on Zoom, the African Development Bank representatives and partners congratulated the top 20 winning teams from 10 African countries and emphasised the need for youth driven and gender inclusive innovations.
”We have had a 37% participation from women in this challenge and we encourage women to keep up the good work and others to get involved in creating solutions for African problems”, said Ms. Florencia Fedel the Lead Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Luvent Consulting, one of the partners in the #AfricaVsVirus challenge.
What is the AfricaVsVirus Challenge?
Following the COVID-19 global pademic, the African Development Bank and its partners organised the #AfricaVsVirus hackathon through an online platform to promote digital citizen participation, enabling the co-creation of solutions to address the challenges presented by the novel coronavirus pandemic to African societies, economies, and individuals.
The Hackathon held in April lasted 72 hours, involved over 25000 participants from 54 African countries and had more than 3000 challenges with 750 final submissions.The Challenge’s top final winners from 10 African countries of Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Malawi, Cameroon, Senegal, Ghana, Algeria and Uganda were recognised and will get a grant of upto USD 20,000 and business support from the Bank’s business incubation Lab. Among the 20 solutions, Jalule is the only solution from Uganda and among the 6 from East Africa.
What next for Jalule
According to the Ministry of Health, Uganda has now confirmed over 30,000 cases of COVID-19 of which over 10,000 have recovered. However this has left many bussinesses devastated due to the lockdown that was imposed in March 2020 with some of them laying off workers and others closing off operations completely. Some businesses totally closed off operations, sales and engagement with clients and have since lost access to their initial clients.
Jalule which has since the lockdown supported 15 businesses in Uganda to increase sales, establish an online presence and reach clients will use the grant to support more businesses with focus on those led by youth and especially young women to overcome the negative effects of Covid-19.
”We hope that local businesses which were severely affected by the pandemic can get back safely on to their operations and be able to manage such emergencies like the Covid-19 pandemic through our solution Jalule”, said Mr.Donald Waruhanga, the Team Lead at Doppler Technologies & Inv LTD and Team Lead of Jalule. ”We have supported some businesses so far with amazing results and we plan to extend this support to more businesses at affordable costs”, he added.
According to the Daily Monitor, Uganda has over 2.2 million subscribers on social media and a mobile phone peneration rate of 23%. Jalule is one of the innovative digital products of Doppler Technologies LTD, an ICT startup in Uganda.