Orange Sierra Leone, the biggest and leading GSM operator in the country in its Orange Social Venture Project in collaboration with GEN Sierra Leone, at a ceremony on Wednesday 16th October, 2019 held at the British Council Hall, Tower Hill, Freetown awarded cash prize to the tune of Ten Million Leones (Le10, 000,000) to the winner, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Agro Fish Farm (SL) Limited, Aminata F. Kandeh.The 2019 Social Venture first prize winner scored 198 points. First runner’s up, CEO of E Net, Samuel Kamara, scored 196 points and receivedcash prize of Le2.5m, one Wi-Fi and two gigabite; while the second runner up,CEO of Envitech Limited, scored 161 points and was awarded cash prize of Le2.5m, one Wi-Fi and two gigabite.

Orange Social Venture project is intended to create the platform for young innovators and creative thinkers to become entrepreneurs in their respective ventures.

Orange(SL) CEO, Aminata Kane revealed that the event was the ninth edition to be hosted in the country and the winner would eventually participate in the national competition where international judges will award the grand prize to the winners at both national and international level. She said the competition is aimed at rewarding the best innovators and socially responsible business projects in Africa and the Middle East that provide content services.

According to her, 15 innovators participated in the preliminary stage of the event but only three lucky ones made it to the finals where an independent panel was instituted to choose the best innovators.

The winner of Orange social venture, Aminata F. Kandeh, holder of BSc. in Aquaculture and Fisheries management,expressed thanks and appreciation to Orange (SL) for the motivation.

She further registered commitment to continue with her venture.

According to her, she was moved to engage in the venture following the increase in human demand for fish and influx of illegal fishing in SierraLeone’s exclusive economic zone.She said that her business model was to target low income earners that love eating fish, households and restaurants; pointing out that as a company they want to tap five percent of the 85% of the population that eat fish to meet their protein requirement.

The impact of her venture she said cannot be over-emphasized as it would help to reduce malnutrition, improve nutrition and wellbeing of people and also provide an efficient way to utilize the swamps for more revenue generation through fish farming.

GEN Sierra Leone Managing Director, Francis Stevens George, said the competition is a transformation event which would catapult people with innovation to become entrepreneurs with Orange taking the lead in entrepreneur innovations.