BY TOM JACKSON ON
Ghanaian church management software startup Asoriba was named Africa’s best startup at the inaugural Seedstars Africa event held in Casablanca, Morocco over the weekend.
Last year, the Seedstars World global contest hosted African heats in Mozambique, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana,Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Angola, Tanzania, Senegal and Botswana.
The global seed-stage startup competition followed this up by joining forces with StartupYourLife, one of the major Moroccan startup organisations, to host Seedstars Africa, the first edition of an annual summit that connects African entrepreneurs, investors and entrepreneurship ecosystems.
More than 300 attendees, the local winners from Africa and over 25 mentors from across the world visited Casablanca for a two-day bootcamp and full-day conference, with Asoriba named the best African startup and winning prizes from Seedstars and Microsoft BizSpark.
Asoriba, the winner of the Ghanaian leg of the competition, is a cloud-based church management software that allows for easier administration of churches and members, faster communication and seamless payment for churches. It was chosen as the winner by a jury consisting of 500 Startups venture partner Hasan Haider, African Business Angel Network (ABAN) founding member Alexandra Fraser, and MEST head of product Emmanuel Quartey.
All 16 African startups will visit to Geneva, Switzerland at the end of February for the global Seedstars World final to compete for numerous prizes, such as US$500,000 equity investment for the global winner and the US$500,000 travel track investment with the lastminute.com group.