By Feima Sesay
Orange Sierra Leone, one of the leading telecommunications company in the Sierra Leone In, a bid to support social innovation and encourage local entrepreneurship, has on the 13 March 2023 officially launched the 5th Edition of Orange Social Venture Prize and 13th Edition in Africa and the Middle East.
The event was held at the Head Quarter Office Hill Station at Imatt in Freetown.
Speaking on the purpose of the launching, Head of Public Relations and Cooperate Social Responsibility Orange Sierra Leone, Kamah Omar Sheriff Abass, expressed how thrilled and excited he was over the launching ceremony.
“As a mobile telecoms company, Orange is positioned to be the leading digital partner for startups in Africa and Middle East” adding that ‘’this is why Orange Middle East and Africa (OMEA) initiated the Orange Social Venture Prize (OSVP) 13 years ago to reward the best technological projects with positive impact and solution to social challenges mainly in the fields of education, health, agriculture, mobile payment or sustainable development in Africa and the middle East,” he noted.
He further disclosed that the competition is organized annually in all 17 Orange affiliates in Orange Middle East and Africa (OMEA) and the three winners from each of the 17 countries get an opportunity to compete in a grand international contest were 1 out of the 51 contestants emerge as the winner whereby the winner bags a whooping sum of 25 thousand Euros. He further revealed that Orange SL launched the OSVP competition in Sierra Leone in 2019, three years after joining the OMEA family and successfully held four national OSVP competitions in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively.
He said last year out of 128 applicants, Usman Yaah of Auto Smart Irrigation and Energy, emerged as the Winner for the national contest in 2022 and won a grand prize of 100 million Leones, whilst Joseph Koroma emerged as the OSVP International Grand Prize winner for Sierra Leone out of 17 Orange affiliates and won the grand prize of 25 thousand Euros.
They later introduced an additional prize to increase female participation and to promote projects offering a technological solution to improve the living conditions of women were Adeola Carew emerged as the winner with 50 million Leones grand prize to support the enhancement of the safe space project.
