Six East African startup entrepreneurs from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda will receive $20,00 each from MIT D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellowships program. The one-year MIT D-Lab Scale-Ups fellowship program supports social entrepreneurs to bring poverty-alleviating products to the market at scale. The program aims to help the entrepreneurs to reduce risk and position their ventures for investment, partnership, and growth.

The entrepreneurs include Winnie Gitau who is the founder of  Kwangu Kwako, which provides safer, healthier, and more secure housing alternatives to the traditional informal settlement structures in Kenya, Dysmus Kisil, the founder of Solar Freeze, a Kenya-based enterprise that has pioneered mobile cold storage units powered by renewable energy to help rural smallholder farmers reduce postharvest loss, and Peter Mumo Nyamai the founder of Expressions Global Group, a social venture which supplies innovative, durable, and environment-friendly rainwater harvesting products to improve irrigation and boost productivity among rural smallholder farmers in Kenya.

Others are Christian Mwilage the founder of EcoAct Tanzania, a for‐profit social enterprise that has developed a chemical-free and energy-conserving technology which transforms post-consumer waste plastics into durable plastic timbers for use in construction, Uganda’s Chrispinus Onyancha, the CEO of clinicPesa, a platform established to provide access to health care financing to individuals in East Africa to offset medical bills and buy medications at any clinicPesa-registered clinic, hospital, or pharmacy and another Tanzanian Prince Prosper Tillya who is the founder and managing director of FixChap, a digital platform in Tanzania through which clients can book repair requests and get connected instantly to verified local handymen, sourced from vocational training institutions.

Source: MIT-D-Lab