Cape Town-based MySmartFarm was announced as the winner of IBM's second SA SmartCamp, held at the Tech4Africa conference last week.
MySmartFarm took the honours for its high-tech, cloud-based analytics solution that aims to empower the agriculture sector.
According to IBM, MySmartFarm will represent Africa in the finals of the IBM SmartCamp in Istanbul, Turkey, on 30 and 31 October. In preparation for this competition, MySmartFarm will gain support and mentorship from IBM's team of experts, as well as benefit from the exposure to venture capital and IBM's business partner ecosystem.
"SmartCamp events are designed to help start-up companies bring technologies that tackle some of the world's most pressing issues to market faster. The events are staged in more than 20 different locations around the world, bringing together investors, mentors and entrepreneurs," says IBM.
Conducted alongside the Tech4Africa Conference, the finalists of IBM SmartCamp Africa presented their businesses aligned with IBM's Smarter Planet strategy to a panel of judges, which included Paul Brunet - IBM; Brett Commaille - AngelHub; Raluca Pauna - Institute of Inventors & Innovators; and Anton Potgieter - Huge Group.
According to Wolfgang von Loeper, founder and CEO of MySmartFarm, the business has been operating since 2012 and developed the first ever consolidation of high-tech agricultural services.
"Our cloud-based solution will mine agricultural data like weather, soil moisture, satellite data and more. Essentially, we have designed a system that collates and collects all the data a farmer needs and then not only illustrates it appealingly, but also processes it to generate intelligence."
Clayton Booysen, ecosystem development lead for IBM SA, says MySmartFarm and all the finalists of IBM SmartCamp demonstrated the kind of great technology innovation Africa is becoming renowned for - initiative and practical.
"MySmartFarm's solution is sophisticatedly simple, addresses a unique need in the market, and is infinitely scalable, which demonstrates the global aspirations we'd like to encourage in our partner start-ups. What's more exciting is that their business model and future plans are solid and will definitely attract positive attention from the investment community to help accelerate their commercial aspirations," he notes.
Gareth Knight, founder of Tech4Africa, said part of MySmartFarm's success at IBM SmartCamp Africa was its ability to find something that provides value.
"There are many problems people face in emerging markets, and they all need elegant solutions. And despite the misperceptions that abound, there is no shortage of investors or money, only shortages of good people, scalable and executable opportunities. MySmartFarm presented themselves as a company that can execute and scale, and have a solution that people will use," Knight concluded.
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