This week's AfricArena Nairobi Climate Tech Summit resulted in six African start-ups emerging victorious from pitching battles to various investors.

More than 20 businesses operating in the continent's green economy took part in an intensive pre-summit AfricArise Founder's Bootcamp training session. 

The start-ups are active in either clean tech, climate tech, agri-tech, and/or circular economy sectors, and were challenged by investors to defend their solutions in capital raising efforts. 

The winning teams convinced investors at the two-day Summit of the prospects of their unique and scalable ventures in five-minute pitch battles.

Each of the start-ups, including cohorts from the Korea-Africa Foundation, SAIS supported by GIZ, and Digital Africa, demonstrated why Africa's green economy is growing due to the potential of technology and how to combine it with green finance to address the continent's pressing environmental challenges.

After the pitch battles the following start-ups were named winners:

•Best clean-tech start-up award: MonSapo, a cleantech start-up from Tunisia leveraging machine learning and AI to optimise the conversion of used cooking oil into eco-friendly cleaning products

•Best climate-tech start-up award: Rhea from Kenya, which offers a tech solution for analysing basic soil nutrients and generate recommendations using machine learning software.

•Best agri-tech start-up award: GenePlus Global Limited, a Kenyan agricultural biotechnology company.

•Best circular economy start-up award: Gjenge Makers, a Kenyan social enterprise that addresses plastic waste pollution by recycling.

• Best investor pitch award: Flat6Labs Africa Seed Fund ( Kenya)

• Most promising entrepreneur award: Ecolinks, a renewable energy and carbon offset project developer headquartered in South Korea and focused on solar, clean cooking and clean water projects across Africa.

Each start-up received $25,000 in AWS Activate credits and will compete in the final round at the AfricArena Grand Summit alongside the other regional champions from the AfricArena Tour 2024.

According to Gerishom Manyengo, a business analyst at the Kenya Climate Innovation Center: "We are seeing the cumulative effects of our investment in Kenya’s tech infrastructure and ecosystem pay rich dividends in how Kenyan-bred start-ups are leading Africa forward in capturing a large portion of investment streaming into the continent and sharing best practices.”

Four of the six winners are from Kenya.

Henri Zietsman, senior start-up business development manager at AWS Startups, commended AfricArena for its efforts in highlighting the innovation hubs across Africa.