HiiL(Hague Institution for Innovation of law) Justice Accelerator is now accepting applications for the HiiL Justice Accelerating Challenge 2018. HiiL Justice Accelerator finds and supports the best justice entrepreneurs in order to create justice for all.
HiiL? Who are they?
HiiL provide training to justice entrepreneurs to help them acquire the skills they need most to manage and lead their innovations. They also offer seed funding(capital investment in exchange for a stake) and business services to help entrepreneurs with scaling of their innovations. They focus particularly on Africa and the Middle East but they do still look at other regions in the world.
Though the Justice Accelerating Challenge is a global call they are particularly interested in applications from Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Ukraine, South Africa, Tunisia, Lebanon, Jordan, UAE and Netherlands(Holland). Those interested can apply here.
The competition…
According to Disrupt Africa, the challenge is in three parts. The best innovations received through the challenge will be invited to pitch to a panel of judges at HiiL’s annual Southern Africa Boostcamp, which will take place as part of the Leaderex convention in Sandton on September 4.
Following that, the most promising Boostcamp participants will be taken to The Hague in order to participate in the HiiL Justice Entrepreneur School, an intensive week-long programme of specialist business training and technical advice.
Selected innovations will then take part in the HiiL Justice Accelerator programme, which runs for between three months and one year depending on the innovator’s needs.
Who have they helped thus far?
Last year, 3 Zimbabwean innovations fared well and managed to make it to this Boostcamp. Road Rules a Zim startup managed to walk away with 5000EUR as they won that overall event. They progressed to The Hague(global event) and currently are currently receiving support from HiiL which includes up to 20 000EUR in equity-free funding. Oh, you might be wondering what equity free funding is. It’s seed capital that’s provided without the exchange of a stake.
Thus far they have funded over 350 startups during the past five years. One such startup is Ushahidi a Kenyan based platform for reporting human rights abuses. Ushahidi uses technology and here’s a bit of their story: In 2007 post-election, violence broke out and more than 1500 people were killed along with the displacement of more than 500 000. Mainstream media was unable to report what was happening on the ground but Ushahidi and their open source web platform that allowed people to share stories of what was happening to them and the rest of the country at the time made such info accessible. In 2013 they managed to secure funding from HiiL.
They also supported other startups which include Community Justice(Liberia), DIYLaw(Nigeria) and Restorative Justice(Peru) just to name a few.
Apply to be part of HiiL’s Justice Accelerator
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I hope Techzim will bring more articles like this on startups. Whether they fail or succeed. Why they fail or succeed and lessons learnt. What could they have done differently to avoid collapsing. It’s in startups and innovation that jobs are going to be created in our country. I regularly go to Asian sites to catch up on startups that go from zero to successful profit earning companies, able to stand on their feet than being propped up by NGOs or hard to come by funding.