The first Development Market place for the African Diaspora in Europe (D-MADE) ended in Brussels with a total jury award of close to a million dollars for 16 investment projects in Africa.
The projects range from the processing of raw cashew nuts for export in Ghana to introducing new medical technologies to remote rural areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rome-based Gary Mamadou Tounkara of Mali presented a winning project to transform and develop a range of products from shea butter.
"We will work to improve the economic condition of rural women in the Sahel region who rely heavily on the extraction of shea butter as a source of revenue," he said.
Building on their experiences in the Netherlands, Ethiopian brothers Redwan and Elias Haroon developed a project to cultivate vegetables in the Greta Rift Valley, using irrigation technologies that are still unused in that region.
The winners were selected from a group of 68 finalists who presented projects that a 24-person jury deemed innovative, sustainable and based on sound business principles.
The 16 winners currently reside in seven European nations -- Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Britain.
The winning projects will be implemented in 11 African countries, including Mali, Benin, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Togo.
Support for D-MADE came from the Belgian Development Cooperation, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the French Ministry of Immigration and Development Partnership, the French Development Agency, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and Brussels Airlines.
The D-MADE initiative was launched in 2007 to allow enterprises from the African diaspora in Europe to participate in the development of their countries.
Source: Xinhua
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article