Visionary Reports

The three best innovative ideas selected on Tuesday 15 April in Douala will represent Cameroon in South Africa.

Winners of the Challenge

The 2025 edition of the Pachi Panda Innovative Challenge has come to an end with the selection of the three best innovative projects that will represent Cameroon in South Africa in the coming months. The Challenge has a clear ambition to ignite youth-led, technology-based innovation in response to Cameroon’s most pressing environmental challenges, from waste management and water resilience to community development and energy solutions. Tuesday’s event gave the 11 finalists the opportunity to pitch their ideas and convince the judges and the audience why their ideas should be chosen over the others. After their various pitches, the top 3 ideas were selected, with Afopezi Moses’ AgriFresh winning first prize. The idea was to develop local means of storing tomatoes to reduce waste. While SwarmDec by Njonguo Sindy came second. She focused on beekeeping, innovating a technology to identify and predict the activities of bees in their colonies, which will help farmers to divide their colony in time to prevent swarming, resulting in more honey products on farms and income for the farmer. Third place went to Seka Jean Blaise’s Wise Cool project, which is based on innovations to preserve medicines in rural areas, especially where there is no electricity. The selected project will represent Cameroon in South Africa where it will compete against other African countries including Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia.

The Cameroon Pachi Panda Challenge is a joint effort by MTN and WWF to inspire and support innovative solutions to pressing environmental challenges across the continent. WWF Country Director, Alain Ononino, congratulated the winners and urged them to proudly represent Cameroon in South Africa. He reiterated that the programme is in line with WWF’s global goals, Africa strategy and best practices. It also adds significant value to the Mobilising More for Climate (MM4C) programme. Specifically, the Challenge contributes to WWF’s core goals of zero habitat loss, preventing species extinction and promoting healthy populations. In addition, WWF’s Africa strategy, ‘Making Nature Count’, aims to ensure that the value of Africa’s natural capital is fully integrated into decision-making by governments, businesses, financial institutions and society.For the runner-up, Njonguo Sindy, it was an opportunity to showcase her initiative and use her idea to improve beekeeping in her community.It should be recalled that when the project was launched last year, some 126 projects were submitted, of which 11 were selected to pitch for the top three to represent Cameroon. The three best projects also received cash prizes ranging from CFA 1.5m to CFA 3million.

By GINA ESONG