But for the award-winning Ethiopian startup to achieve liftoff has been no easy task. It has had to fight tooth and nail to raise funds, says its youthful boss.
The site has no cranes or cement mixer, just a concrete floor on which four workers make a wall by fitting the blocks together like Lego, tapping them with a mallet to ensure a good fit.The beams bolted together on all four sides of the walls, hold the structure up. "You can... build 50 square metres of a building in just five days, so that's super fast compared to other forms of construction," she said.Speed and the smart use of unwanted plastic aren't the only benefits.
The Ethiopian previously worked for Google, the World Bank and Unicef after studying in the United States."There's a really large network that I already had within my professional sphere that I could tap into in the beginning," he told AFP last month in Paris, where he went to pick up the award."I've met over 600 people in two years. Out of those 600 people, about 20 of them have become investors.
"There are very few 'business angels' in Africa," said Sergio Pimenta, vice president for Africa at the Societe Financiere Internationale , a private-sector unit of the World Bank that has just launched a $180-million fund to help provide a financing source.
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Source: ITNewsAfrica - 🏆 27. / 59 Read more »