14 North African startups have been named semi-finalists of the MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Startup Competition, which will offer the winners US$120,000 in grant funding. The 13th edition of the competition invited applications for three different tracks – Startups, Ideas, and Social Entrepreneurship – and received more than 4,000 applications. The rest of the list is made up of Algerian cloud-based engineering simulation software company Singularity Computing, and Moroccan chatbot-builder Bots Factory. There are no North African companies in the Ideas Track, but the Social Entrepreneurship Track features agri-tech startup Baramoda, mobile app for disabled individuals Entaleq, micro-lending app Kashat, and ed-tech startup PraxiLabs, all from Egypt. Also pitching in this track is Morocco’s GreenWatech, which has developed a low-cost and ecological sanitation service.

Source: The North Africa Journal January 22, 2020 06:33 UTC