The SusTech4Africa challenge wants to enforce entrepreneurs and scale-ups creating innovative and sustainable products and services. The competition aims to build strong relationships between entrepreneurs, generating viable and in-depth business plans while enhancing the tools to scale-up the different players. For more information about Marnick's trip to Uganda and the unfolding of the challenge in November, click here.

The next part of the Challenge is a crowdfunding. This crowdfunding is possible through Close the Gap and GoodUp's Leap² platform. All participants will receive a crowdfunding training by Close the Gap's partner WITU (Women in Tech Uganda). Then, they will each create their own crowdfunding page. This page will be used for an entire month to set up a local crowdfunding space. Apart from these specific local pages, a general crowdfunding page will also be created in order for international supporters to provide money as well. 

As it is impossible to donate money directly from foreign countries such as Belgium to Uganda, international supporters are advised to participate in the crowdfunding through the general platform. 

An overview of the participants of the SusTech4Africa challenge that will crowdfund through the Leap² platform:

• Adapt plus Ltd: ADAPT+ designed a clean low-cost customized ethanol stove that eliminates all forms of indoor pollution and to reduce the number of mothers that die prematurely as a result of exposure to smoke from traditional cook-stoves and open fires.
• Golden Rosa Limited: a plastic waste recycling and processing company
• Akaboxi Ltd: a digital financial inclusion system that enables smallholder farmers in communities to manage and monitor their savings together.
• Trautbuck Energy: aims at training poor households and communities in the art of manufacturing briquettes from the wastes around them, hence turning wastes into money
• Kambasco Technologies Ltd: focuses on coordinating and accelerating efforts to expand access to energy to rural and off grid health facilities.

For more detailed information about the different initiatives, check out their individual crowdfunding pages (but keep in mind that it is only possible to support them through these individual pages if you are located in Uganda), which are accessible here.