Ugandan agri-fintech startup Emata was named the Best Newcomer at the Global Startup Awards finale in Copenhagen, Denmark held on March 30th 2023.
The Ugandan ambassador to Nordic Countries and Baltics, Emata CEO, and co-founder Bram van den Bosch received the award.
Emata was the only Ugandan startup nominated for the prestigious accolade and competed against startups from Portugal, Estonia, Israel, UAE, India, Indonesia, Denmark, and Turkey in the category of the best newcomer.
There were more than 80,000 nominations for this year’s Global Startup Awards.
This is Emata’s second win, following the agri-fintech’s “Best Newcomer” in Africa win in 2022, out of 8272 nominated companies and entrepreneurs from all 54 African countries.
Emata is a Ugandan fintech and licensed microfinance institution. The company leverages technology and partnerships with agricultural cooperatives to offer farmers affordable, digital financing. The company creates alternative credit scores based on data points like a farmer’s delivery history in place of collateral requirements. Emata encourages farmers to grow their farms into a business and invest in a productive future.
Pearl Bank Celebrates Customers in Festive Campaign Dubbed Pearl SantaThe agri-fintech describes itself as disrupting Africa’s USD240 bn farmer financing gap by providing digital affordable loans to farmers. The company combines AI-powered alternative credit scoring and partnerships with cooperatives and other agricultural partners to offer farmers digital loans.
Global Startup Awards is the largest independent startup ecosystem competition. The organisation has its headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark and is present in over 120 countries (divided into 12 regions) on 3 continents. 15 unicorns have come out of the awards, which aims to find, support and connect the top 1% of each local startup ecosystem in the world.
Commenting about the win, Mr. Bram van den Bosch said it was a “great honour and support of the work we do every day”.
“Africa has incredible agricultural potential to feed its fast-growing population and the rest of the world. In Uganda alone, agriculture is 30% of the country’s GDP, yet smallholder farmers struggle to access affordable financing. Emata is solving this. We dare farmers to dream big, invest in transforming their farms into businesses and secure their own prosperity,” he added.
Emata is also a recent alumnus of the prestigious Swedish accelerator Norrsken as well as the Silicon Valley-based Plug & Play.
