• Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
ManoReporters.com
ADVERTISEMENT
  • Home
  • News
    • All
    • Business and Economy
    • Politics
    • Health
    • Sci-Tech
    • Regional
    • Culture
    Members of Team Kenema Water Supply pose with the symbolic cheque of USD3,000 after being declared winner of the maiden edition of the Sierra Leone Afinnovate Challenge in Bo City on Saturday, September 2025. Image, Emmanuel Kamara, ManoReporters.

    Sierra Leone: Young innovators from Kenema clinch top prize in maiden edition of National Afinnovate Youth Challenge

    SLYDCL Executive Director, Habib T. Kamara gives a statement at the event in the Lumely Community Center, Grass Field on Monday, September 25, 2025. Image, Stephen 'Roman' Lahai, ManoReporters.

    KUSH: SLYDCL convenes outreach in Grass Field Community, Lumley

    Participants pose for a group photo after the opening courtesies of the high level Africa CDC engagement on Mental Health Law in Sierra Leone on Monday, September 15, 2025. Image, Steven 'Roman' Lahai, ManoReporters.

    Africa CDC convenes stakeholders meeting to mobilize support for Sierra Leone’s Mental Health Bill

    Stakeholders at the engagement in the conference hall of the National AIDS Secretariat in Freetown. Image, Stephen 'Roman' Lahai, ManoReporters.

    Campaigners renew call for action amid persistent drug crisis in Sierra Leone

    ECOWAS Health Ministers who met in a ministerial conference ahead of ELFIC2025 in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. Image, WAHO.

    ELFIC2025: ECOWAS Health Ministers commit to advancing Lassa fever vaccine

    Delegates, among them the Prime Minister of Cote d'Ivoire, attending the opening ceremony of the 2nd Lassa fever International Conference in Abidjan on September 2, 2025. Image, WAHO.

    2nd Lassa fever International Conference opens in Abidjan with calls for regional collaboration

    Trending Tags

  • Special Reports
  • Opinion
  • Sports
  • True or False
  • Interview
  • ManoReporters TV
  • Tender and Job
  • Election 2023
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • All
    • Business and Economy
    • Politics
    • Health
    • Sci-Tech
    • Regional
    • Culture
    Members of Team Kenema Water Supply pose with the symbolic cheque of USD3,000 after being declared winner of the maiden edition of the Sierra Leone Afinnovate Challenge in Bo City on Saturday, September 2025. Image, Emmanuel Kamara, ManoReporters.

    Sierra Leone: Young innovators from Kenema clinch top prize in maiden edition of National Afinnovate Youth Challenge

    SLYDCL Executive Director, Habib T. Kamara gives a statement at the event in the Lumely Community Center, Grass Field on Monday, September 25, 2025. Image, Stephen 'Roman' Lahai, ManoReporters.

    KUSH: SLYDCL convenes outreach in Grass Field Community, Lumley

    Participants pose for a group photo after the opening courtesies of the high level Africa CDC engagement on Mental Health Law in Sierra Leone on Monday, September 15, 2025. Image, Steven 'Roman' Lahai, ManoReporters.

    Africa CDC convenes stakeholders meeting to mobilize support for Sierra Leone’s Mental Health Bill

    Stakeholders at the engagement in the conference hall of the National AIDS Secretariat in Freetown. Image, Stephen 'Roman' Lahai, ManoReporters.

    Campaigners renew call for action amid persistent drug crisis in Sierra Leone

    ECOWAS Health Ministers who met in a ministerial conference ahead of ELFIC2025 in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. Image, WAHO.

    ELFIC2025: ECOWAS Health Ministers commit to advancing Lassa fever vaccine

    Delegates, among them the Prime Minister of Cote d'Ivoire, attending the opening ceremony of the 2nd Lassa fever International Conference in Abidjan on September 2, 2025. Image, WAHO.

    2nd Lassa fever International Conference opens in Abidjan with calls for regional collaboration

    Trending Tags

  • Special Reports
  • Opinion
  • Sports
  • True or False
  • Interview
  • ManoReporters TV
  • Tender and Job
  • Election 2023
No Result
View All Result
ManoReporters.com
No Result
View All Result

Sierra Leone: Young innovators from Kenema clinch top prize in maiden edition of National Afinnovate Youth Challenge

ManoReporters by ManoReporters
September 30, 2025
in News
0
Members of Team Kenema Water Supply pose with the symbolic cheque of USD3,000 after being declared winner of the maiden edition of the Sierra Leone Afinnovate Challenge in Bo City on Saturday, September 2025. Image, Emmanuel Kamara, ManoReporters.

Members of Team Kenema Water Supply pose with the symbolic cheque of USD3,000 after being declared winner of the maiden edition of the Sierra Leone Afinnovate Challenge in Bo City on Saturday, September 2025. Image, Emmanuel Kamara, ManoReporters.

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

By Kemo Cham

ADVERTISEMENT
Team Kenema Water Supply, winners of top prize of Afinnovative Challenge Sierra Leone, pose with members of SACE SALONE, organizers of the competition on Saturday September 27. Image, Emmanuel Kamara, ManoReporters.

A team of young innovators from Kenema have been adjudged winner of the top prize in the maiden edition of the Social Equity Programme National Afinnovate Youth Challenge in Sierra Leone.

‘Team Kenema Water Supply’, as their project is called, designed a revolutionary, durable, affordable and sustainable solar-powered water pump that enables farmers to pump water directly from the earth to the field with the potential to increase their productivity. The team of six youngsters is one of 10 groups that emerged from among over 3,000 budding innovators who participated in a year-long initiative implemented by the Center for Advocacy and Sustainable Empowerment Sierra Leone (CASE SALONE), with funding and technical support from the Z Zurich Foundation through the Ghana-based Junior Achievement Africa. It’s part of a continent-wide initiative with the primary goal of equipping young people for self-reliance.

The project, which targets youth age 16 to 25, took the form of bootcamps and mentorship on entrepreneurship, leadership, innovation and mental wellbeing skills, with the beneficiaries trained on basic skills of starting and running a business.

CASE SALONE worked with a group of 16 partner organizations as co-implementers of the project, conducting a total of 15 four-day bootcamps for participants drawn from the four regions of the country. The bootcamps were held in the regional capitals of Bo, Makeni and Kenema, as well as in Freetown. The participants then underwent an eight week-long online coaching and mentorship sessions, climaxing with a regional pitching competition, from which the 10 finalists emerged.

CASE Salone said the project aims to address unemployment and drug abuse among youth, and build more social innovators who will serve as catalysts of change and influence job creation, contributing to the Sierra Leone government’s Big Five Game Changer development plan, as well as the global Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

Ibrahim Mansaray, the Social Equity Programme Lead at CASE SALONE, a community-based organization operating in the southern district of Bo, said the initiative offered a “big opportunity” for all young people across the country.

“We want to awaken the creative minds in innovations among our young people, and tap into them to enable them to not just capacitate themselves but also to contribute to community and national development,” he said.

All 10 finalists that emerged from the regional pitching competition received seed grants of USD500 each. In addition, as the top prize winner, Team Kenema Water Supply went home with USD3,000 after the final pitching held in Bo on Saturday 27th September. They will also represent Sierra Leone at an international competition scheduled for October 31st, with the opportunity to win the ultimate prize of USD5,000.

Jacob Sahr Yajo, Team Lead for Team Kenema, expressed delight at the breakthrough of his team.

“I am overjoyed,” he told ManoReporters.

Yajo showered praises on organizations like Network Empowerment for Young Generation Sierra Leone (NEYG – SL) and the Children Forum Network for the technical support provided, and CASE SALONE and its partners for the opportunity to participate in the competition.

The runner-up, Team Eco Twist Green Generation, designed a technology that transforms plastic waste into beautifully hand-made craft and Sierra Leonean fabrics like bags, prayer mats, clothes, and frames. And for this, they went home with USD2,000 as the second prize. Second runner-up, Team Eco Circula, took home with them USD1,000 as the third prize, for their technology that transforms plastic waste into durable bricks for construction.

Young innovators pose with judges and organizers of Afinnovate Challenge in Bo Cit, Southern Sierra Leone, on Saturday September 27.

The other seven finalists are Team Cap Flop, whose innovation transforms cassava into varieties of nutritious food with the aim of increasing food production and potentially reducing reliance on imported foods; Team Tech and Innovation worked on a technology that promotes safety and security for local farmers through a device that monitors and detects movement and trigger alarms to notify farmers of intruders and wild animals; Team Crop Care Salone’s solar powered cold storage facility preserves harvested fruits and vegetables; Team Establish the Needful created a powerful solar light book that turns sunlight into study time; Team Agro Innovation transforms kitchen waste into rich organic manure, thereby increasing the chances of local farmers to produce two to three times a year; Team Plantain Mix produces nutritious, affordable and accessible baby food using local and nutritious ingredients like Plantain, Fish, Beans and Bennie Seed; Team Achievers transforms cartons and plastic waste into beautiful decor and wall frames.

Ousman Shero Kamara, Deputy Director at Elevate Afric Innovation, one of 16 collaborators of CASE Salone in the project, said initiatives like this are what Sierra Leone needs to lift itself from its current situation.

“What we need now is not much of formal education, we need these skills that will place us on the path to progress,” he said.

Saturday’s final pitching competition held in Bo brought together all partners of CASE Salone, both locally and internationally.

Remijus N. Iweobi, Programme Officer for Global Fund for Children in Liberia, a partner of CASE SALONE, said the Social Equity Programme is a testament of the real impact that civll society organizations and NGOs can make in powering young people with the skills, the knowledge and the resources that they need to lead the change and develop their countries.

“NGOs would not change the world. What can develop a country is businesses, is entrepreneurship, and we need NGOs to empower young people to go into entrepreneurship ventures and businesses that challenge and solve the issues that we are facing using the resources that we have,” he said.

Paschal Fellah, a board member at CASE Salone, urged the finalists to think development beyond academic education by embracing digital media in seeking solutions to community problems.

“In the job market, they do not look for how much books you have read, rather, they look at your professional experience. So you have to be creative in whatever you do,” he said.

ADVERTISEMENT
Previous Post

KUSH: SLYDCL convenes outreach in Grass Field Community, Lumley

ManoReporters

ManoReporters

Stay connected

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
State security forces man a checkpoint at an intersecition between State House and Siaka Steven Street in Freteown. Photo credit, Ishmail Kindama Dumbuya

Breaking: Sierra Leone gov’t says it ‘rebuffed’ attempted break into armory

November 26, 2023
Sarah Van Horne, Public Affairs Officer, US Embassy in Freetown. Photo credit, Courtesy.

Sierra Leone: US considering further actions after visa ban – Embassy spokeswoman

September 1, 2023
Anthrax Outbreak: Sierra Leone records first human cases

Anthrax Outbreak: Sierra Leone records first human cases

May 22, 2022
Former Guinea junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara and the two other close allies of his who are thought to have escaped from prison in Conakry on Saturday, November 4. Image by Guinea News.

Breaking! Guinea: Heavy gunfire reported in Kaloum, around central prison

November 4, 2023
Diabetes: The “Ticking Time Bomb” for Africa! Are we sitting on it?

Diabetes: The “Ticking Time Bomb” for Africa! Are we sitting on it?

0
Sierra Leonean on trial for war crimes in Liberia released

Sierra Leonean on trial for war crimes in Liberia released

0
Sierra Leone, France seek tighter cooperation

Sierra Leone, France seek tighter cooperation

0
Wellington Fire Disaster: Victims Benefit From Fullah Progressive Union Largesse

Wellington Fire Disaster: Victims Benefit From Fullah Progressive Union Largesse

0
Members of Team Kenema Water Supply pose with the symbolic cheque of USD3,000 after being declared winner of the maiden edition of the Sierra Leone Afinnovate Challenge in Bo City on Saturday, September 2025. Image, Emmanuel Kamara, ManoReporters.

Sierra Leone: Young innovators from Kenema clinch top prize in maiden edition of National Afinnovate Youth Challenge

September 30, 2025
SLYDCL Executive Director, Habib T. Kamara gives a statement at the event in the Lumely Community Center, Grass Field on Monday, September 25, 2025. Image, Stephen 'Roman' Lahai, ManoReporters.

KUSH: SLYDCL convenes outreach in Grass Field Community, Lumley

September 26, 2025
Participants pose for a group photo after the opening courtesies of the high level Africa CDC engagement on Mental Health Law in Sierra Leone on Monday, September 15, 2025. Image, Steven 'Roman' Lahai, ManoReporters.

Africa CDC convenes stakeholders meeting to mobilize support for Sierra Leone’s Mental Health Bill

September 16, 2025
Stakeholders at the engagement in the conference hall of the National AIDS Secretariat in Freetown. Image, Stephen 'Roman' Lahai, ManoReporters.

Campaigners renew call for action amid persistent drug crisis in Sierra Leone

September 12, 2025

Recent News

Members of Team Kenema Water Supply pose with the symbolic cheque of USD3,000 after being declared winner of the maiden edition of the Sierra Leone Afinnovate Challenge in Bo City on Saturday, September 2025. Image, Emmanuel Kamara, ManoReporters.

Sierra Leone: Young innovators from Kenema clinch top prize in maiden edition of National Afinnovate Youth Challenge

September 30, 2025
SLYDCL Executive Director, Habib T. Kamara gives a statement at the event in the Lumely Community Center, Grass Field on Monday, September 25, 2025. Image, Stephen 'Roman' Lahai, ManoReporters.

KUSH: SLYDCL convenes outreach in Grass Field Community, Lumley

September 26, 2025
Participants pose for a group photo after the opening courtesies of the high level Africa CDC engagement on Mental Health Law in Sierra Leone on Monday, September 15, 2025. Image, Steven 'Roman' Lahai, ManoReporters.

Africa CDC convenes stakeholders meeting to mobilize support for Sierra Leone’s Mental Health Bill

September 16, 2025
Stakeholders at the engagement in the conference hall of the National AIDS Secretariat in Freetown. Image, Stephen 'Roman' Lahai, ManoReporters.

Campaigners renew call for action amid persistent drug crisis in Sierra Leone

September 12, 2025
ADVERTISEMENT
Contact

info@manoreporters.com | Freetown, Sierra Leone

Contact

info@manoreporters.com | Freetown, Sierra Leone

© 2022 Powered by Manocommunication.com
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • Business and Economy
    • Politics
    • Health
    • Sci-Tech
      • Data
    • Regional
    • Culture
  • Special Reports
  • Opinion
  • Sports
  • True or False
  • Interview
  • ManoReporters TV
  • Tender and Job

© 2022 Powered by Manocommunication.com