A better future for Tanzania

Improving health and wellness, together

Creating a better future with the solutions of today: that’s the guiding principle of Fondation Botnar. Founded in Basel in 2003, this philanthropic organization is committed to improving health and well-being for young people in cities around the world - and this includes the opportunity to use digital technologies.

In 2018, Fondation Botnar approached Creaholic to help apply AI and digital solutions to improve the health and well-being of young people in Tanzania. Our tasks included the conception, planning and execution of a team competition for young innovators: the “Botnar Challenge”.

No Challenge without a plan

The essential question was clear from the very beginning: how can we improve the health and wellness of young people in Tanzania with help from AI and digital solutions? We wanted young, innovative teams to apply themselves to this challenge and submit their solution concepts.

But we still had to find a path to this result. To start, we worked closely with Fondation Botnar to set the framework for the Botnar Challenge:

How should the Botnar Challenge work?
How should the participants be found?
What steps are necessary?
How can two conferences - Sahara Sparks in Tanzania and World Summit AI in the Netherlands - be incorporated into the Challenge?

We set out an initial concept to clarify these basic questions. This plan formed the basis for actually running the Challenge.

“Buy” instead of “make”

Instead of building a custom application process, we used the HeroX challenge platform, through which the individual teams could submit their solution concepts for consideration. As an advantage, leveraging a specialized, ready-to-use platform made it much simpler to organise and administer the Challenge. This platform was a communication channel and document submission portal for the Challenge participants.

At the same time, Shape History, the marketing partner of Fondation Botnar, helped create marketing materials such as press releases and digital flyers. These were then sent to Botnar partners for further distribution. A wide network including UNICEF, Impact Hub, and Women Deliver promoted the Botnar Challenge in order to attract participation by young, innovative teams from around the world.

Local contacts played a key role in marketing. The majority of the 47 teams that submitted their innovative digital solutions as part of the Challenge came from Tanzania itself and were recruited by Sahara Ventures.

A mammoth task for the jury

The project team, which consisted of Fondation Botnar, Sahara Ventures and Creaholic, selected the most promising projects. The problem, though: to find the best projects from 47 teams with a total of 283 participants is a lengthy process that asked a lot of the jurors.

That’s why we applied the NABC method to this Challenge: this method describes the Need, Approach, Benefit and Competition. In projects, we use NABC to make ideas and business models more concrete. In the context of the Botnar Challenge, this became a useful tool because it created an evaluation grid that made it easier for the jury to assess different teams.

Final rounds in Amsterdam und Tanzania

Of the 47 teams, 12 made it to the semi-finals. Sahara Ventures put Creaholic’s coaching concept into practice: the semi-finalists worked with innovation experts and received advice on the further development of their concepts. After one more round of evaluations, the four finalists were selected.

The final pitches occurred at World Summit AI in Amsterdam and Sahara Sparks 2018 in Tanzania - in each case two teams competed against each other. At these events the finalists participated in a 1.5 hour Creaholic workshop on Human Centred Design. They also had the chance to exchange ideas with experts and innovators at both conferences, and ultimately to present their projects before a jury. The winners of both events received financial support, with which they could start implementing their ideas.