Pearl Max are the winners of this year’s Hult Prize competitions at Kabale university.
The Hult Prize was established in 2010 by Ahmad Ashkar and Bertil Hult, and is an annual, year-long competition that crowd-sources ideas from MBA and college students after challenging them to solve a pressing social issue around topics such as food security, water access, energy, and education.
At Kabale University, a total of 16 teams each with 3 or 4 members took part in the competition on Saturday and presented their ideas before a panel of judges who included Associate Professor, Tamwesigire Caleb, BBC corresponden, Agaba Andrew and Hills FM Corporate Affairs Manager, Twinamatsiko Paul.
The judges used a Hult Prize Foundation scorecard looking for aspects of sustainability, profitability, feasibility, scalability and the disruptive nature of presented start-ups.
One of the teams, Pearl Max, composed of Ruth Namara, Loy Natukunda and Peter Bamuhigire, all students of Kabale University presented a unique idea that seeks to create 10,000 jobs for the young people as well as promoting waste management and environmental conservation, thus winning the competition with a total of 75 points.
Winning team in the global competition will walk away with US$ 1m and as well meet global investors in New York in September 2019.
Speaking at the event, the University’s Vice Chancellor of Kabale University, Prof. Joy Kwesiga, appreciated the idea and pledged further support for related competitions, saying it is important to support young people’s ideas for sustainable development.
“The university management embraced key learning and made commitment to enhance entrepreneurship in Kabale University,” Kwesiga said
“More competitions of such nature should be arranged to make what the students study more practical, establish an innovation hub at Kabale University to encourage innovation and solutions for local challenge.
Kwesiga further committed support for the winning team in terms of refining their business idea for the next phase of the competition, as well as enhancing the business ideas of the other teams that did win the on-campus programme in order to move forward and implement them.
The winning team, Pearl Max, will in March next year travel to Nairobi, Kenya, for regional competitions.
