The Milken Institute, a non-profit organization focused on catalyzing innovative solutions, is building capacity and improving livelihoods through its collaboration with the Motsepe Foundation hence a partnership that gave rise to the Milken-Motsepe Prize for innovators.

An in-depth conversation with Dr. Emily Musil Church, one of the authors of a Milken Institute Report: Electricity Access in Africa: Why a Green Energy Innovation Competition? The report highlights how important clean energy is at local, regional, and global scales, providing insights into the vision of the Milken-Motsepe Prize as it rolls out challenge solution-focused innovative competitions.

Starting with the first prize in 2021 aimed at AgriTech, the Milken-Motsepe Prize successfully ran a campaign envisioning a solution to food insecurity, a pressing issue on the African continent plagued by famine, hunger, and harvest losses. The prize challenged global innovators to demonstrate solutions for smallholder farmers in Africa by utilizing tech to bring more food.

One of the successes of the AgriTech Prize is NovFeed, a biotech company based in Tanzania, which was awarded the $1 million grand prize for its proprietary technology to upcycle organic waste into nutritious, sustainable, and traceable plant-based protein ingredients and concentrated natural biofertilizer for the food system.

According to Diana Orembe, the transition from an idea to a fully operational company, that yields returns, can be attributed to the support from the Milken Institute and the Motsepe Foundation, in their focus on empowering African innovators.

According to Dr. Musil Church, the goal is to develop solutions for current challenges at local, regional, and global scales and prepare for an unpredictable future while addressing equity and sustainability to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

This discussion follows the announcement of the second Milken-Motsepe Prize winner, focusing on green energy, which is instrumental in advancing the fourth industrial revolution. The collaboration between the Milken Institute and the Motsepe Foundation aims at further testing and proving solutions from the diverse, dynamic, and innovative youth across the continent that can be scalable and yield returns.

The success of this collaboration lies in supporting social innovations that benefit both people and the planet, emphasizing sustainability, equity, and scalability to ensure project profitability. The prize empowers innovators in various fields by providing resources and capacity building to enhance their project ideas, aligning them with the targeted vision.

“Through our various programs, we help entrepreneurs build companies and connections, and identify financial models to help scale. It will take ideas, ingenuity, and determination from people in different sectors, bringing new voices and ideas together to save our planet,” stressed Dr. Musil Church.

She further urges innovators and entrepreneurs to continually refine their ideas and conduct more tests despite failures and challenges, ensuring a deeper understanding of their projects. This she says is essential considering the one major challenge in scaling innovations, where investors look for envisioned growth over a specific period.

In addition to continuous testing, entrepreneurs are reminded of the urgency and need to patent their ideas under intellectual property laws to prevent idea and project theft, a common issue in innovation spaces. This she says is vital hence the varied laws in Intellectual property and patent registration depending on the country in question.

Dr. Musil Church notes that the Milken Institute offers comprehensive support, including capacity building. For instance, winners Aftrak and Omnivat, whose projects met the condition of producing 60 KW of energy in 24 hours at a 24/7 cycle, received not only the funding but also engaged with experts offering them the necessary skills to become implementable and investor-ready.

This approach seeks to bring more stakeholders on board an example is the facilitated conversations between Omnivat, a UK-based company with a presence in Malawi, and the Government of Malawi for effective project implementation.

In conclusion, Dr. Musil Church expresses optimism that despite the slow progress toward achieving the SDGs by 2030, it is still possible to meet these development goals by building on the innovations and determination shown by diverse innovators who are solution-focused in addressing most of these challenges.

“The race toward the SDGs by 2030 requires dramatic shifts as we move in the right direction. However, it’s akin to moving a giant ship with billions of people on board. It will take perseverance, new ideas, and collaborations across all sectors and levels to achieve these goals within the next five years,” emphasized Dr. Musil Church.