Innovate Addis
Where Great Minds Connect.

Large quantities of scrap material from leather and textile factories are discarded rather than repurposed.

Smallholders are highly vulnerable to unpredictable weather patterns and droughts.

Textile and industrial parks are discharging untreated wastewater into local ecosystems.

Lack of reliable energy and cold chains for essential medicines in remote clinics.

Fast-growing consumer industries are generating unsustainable levels of plastic waste.

High rates of non-revenue water and inefficient distribution systems in urban utilities.

Approximately 30-40% of produce is lost between farm and market due to lack of cold storage.

Ethiopian cities face a massive housing deficit with traditional methods being too slow and expensive.

Broad systemic challenge regarding public sector innovation silos.

Fuel shortages and high maintenance costs for internal combustion motorcycles make urban delivery expensive and unreliable.

Urban food prices are inflated by multiple middlemen, while farmers get low prices for their bulk produce.

Horticultural products rot on rural farms because small-scale trucks operate on inefficient, manual routes that don't optimize for perishability.

Rural families cannot afford the upfront cost of solar systems that are powerful enough to run productive tools like water pumps or mills.

Global GPS systems often fail in Ethiopian cities with unnamed streets, making e-commerce deliveries inefficient and expensive.

Specialty coffee buyers demand transparency, but smallholder farmers in Jimma lack the sensors and digital logs to prove their origin, leading to lower premiums.

Traditional full-time employment cannot absorb the 2 million youth entering the market annually. The informal sector is huge but lacks dignity, security, and scale.

Ethiopia lacks a reliable street address system, making e-commerce delivery difficult and expensive.

Ethiopia has a massive leather industry with thousands of tons of scrap being discarded.