At the tenth anniversary of the SEED award, the winners were honoured in the presence of 400 guests at the SEED Africa Symposium in Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2016. Each year the award distinguishes young local enterprises which are particularly active in fulfilling sustainable development targets. Like last year, African projects were particularly prominent. A total of twenty awards went to applicants from African countries. Included were projects strengthening agricultural cooperatives by making available solar power in Burkina Faso, initiatives for the production of shoes from recycled material in Ghana and a South African start-up which uses discarded shipping containers to build small-scale solar power plants. One of the awards, the SEED Gender Equality Award, went to a group of Kenyan woman this year. They offer a number of services in the hygiene and energy supply sector by using solar energy and biogas. In 2016 SEED will also honour additional enterprises in India active in social and environment protection fields. The ten best applicants will present their projects in New Delhi on 15 November 2016 at a joint SEED - GIZ event.
The SEED Awards: Advice and financial support
With the awards, the SEED Initiative wants to support young entrepreneurs in their local efforts for better environmental protection and development at local level and help them overcome start-up problems. It is the most important aspect of the projects to create links between social and sustainable management on the one hand and national and international decision-makers on the other hand including the value added this entails for the local communities. The initiative makes a major contribution to social and economic development in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The award winners receive an individual support package from the SEED Initiative. The package includes, for example, technical advice, financial support and access to institutions and cooperation partners who can offer support. The winning projects were honoured at an international award ceremony in Nairobi, Kenya at the SEED Africa Symposium under the motto "Building Bridges for Impact: Green and Inclusive Growth through Entrepreneurship". Around 500 businesses and representatives from politics and society participated in the symposium.
SEED Initiative partners
The SEED Initiative originates from a proposal by the Federal Environment Ministry (BMU). Since it was launched by the BMUB, UNEP, UNDP and IUCN, it was possible to recruit the following supporters for the initiative: U. S. Department of State, Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Spain and Flanders, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, the South African Independent Development Trust, the European Commission, UNIDO, UN Women and Conservation International. The BMUB supports the SEED Initiative through its International Climate Initiative (ICI) which funds climate action and biodiversity projects in developing and emerging countries and countries in transition. Since April 2013, the SEED Initiative has been managed by Adelphi Research in Berlin.