According to management, the pitch competition will highlight climate solutions with potential for transformative impact and facilitate matchmaking between investors and investment opportunities.

Nazanin Alakija, Founder of the S.A.G.E Innovation Centre stated that through the climate pitch hub competition, Sage is searching for feasible, implementable, climate-smart and scalable solutions to address the climate challenge in our cities.

“Today, 55% of the world’s population live in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 70% by 2050. Cities account for just 2% of global land area but are responsible for 70% of greenhouse gas emissions. As such, Sage Innovation Centre seeks well-defined climate-smart solutions at the Minimum Viable Product Stage that can support cities in reducing their emission goals and/or increasing their resilience to climate change impacts,” she said.

The Sage founder further revealed her passion for supporting climate-smart cities – those that are low-carbon and climate-resilient – as a critical part of addressing climate change. “Becoming a climate-smart city requires an integrated approach that combines planning, policy, regulation, and investment. The pitch hub reflects my passion to help plug innovative ideas into our ecosystem of experts ready to build climate-smart cities,” she said.

She further explains that submissions can be goods, services (e.g. financial instruments, risk management mechanisms), technological solutions, or innovative business models that can be applied in one of the urban focus areas such as Disaster Risk Management, Energy, Efficiency, Food, Finance, Health, Information Technology, Infrastructure, Mobility, Planning, Waste, Water.

Call for solutions opens from the 16th of October and closes by the 23rd of October. An independent panel of experts will evaluate all the proposals and choose five finalists to pitch for a N1,000,000 seed investment in their business as well as mentorship

Finalists will take part in a live competition on Saturday, October 26, 2019.

Interested entrepreneurs should visit the S.A.G.E Innovation Centre’s website, http://sageinnovationcentre.com/pitch/ to submit entries.