CASABLANCA, Morocco, March 18, 2024/ -- The 14th Orange Social Venture Prize in Africa and the Middle East will open for submissions on Monday, March 18, 2024. Candidates from the 17 countries within the Orange (www.Orange.com) footprint have until May 26, 2024, to submit their project on the website https://apo-opa.co/3ICHjye.

Since 2011, the OSVP prize has been rewarding innovative start-up projects that use and develop new technologies to make a positive impact in Africa and the Middle East in the fields such as education, healthcare, e-commerce, agriculture, or environment. Through this prize, Orange, as a committed operator, aims to contribute to the socio-economic development, support social and environmental innovation, and encourage entrepreneurship.

The competition has two stages:

• A national stage to collect applications, between March and May 2024 in Orange’s 17 subsidiaries in Africa and the Middle East. At the end of the competition, the national winners will be chosen by a panel of judges made up of members of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and Orange representatives.
• An international stage, where each subsidiary will be represented by the projects of its 3 winners and the projects competing for the International Women’s Prize. The projects will be evaluated by an evaluation committee made up of Group employees. After their evaluation, 10 finalists will be chosen for the International Grand Prize and 5 for the International Women's Prize.

A final jury made up of leading figures from the worlds of tech and entrepreneurship in Africa and the Middle East will then be responsible, in October 2024, for choosing the 3 winners of the International Grand Prize and the winner of the OSVP International Women's Prize from among the 15 projects selected by Orange Group employees. The winners will be awarded:

• €25,000 for the 1st prize-winner.
• €15,000 for the 2nd prize-winner.
• €10,000 for the 3rd prize-winner.
• €20,000 for the winner of the International Women's Prize.

Since the launch of OSVP in 2011, Orange received more than 13,000 applications, is proud to have awarded around €700,000 in prize money to over fifty winners and provided capacity-building support to around one hundred entrepreneurs. In addition to financial support, the OSVP winners will receive support from Orange Digital Centers in their respective countries.