Egypt’s Direxiona matching platform for women drivers and instructors has won the first prize in the AFD Digital Challenge competition at total amount of 50,000 euros.
The award was granted by the AFD, France’s inclusive public development bank, under the title “Digital Challenge Success” for two African startups at a value of 50,000 euros per each.
Direxiona is Egypt’s first online platform that designed for each Egyptian girl to help her find her match with the nearest female driving instructors, based on time and location.
According to the competition organizers, the rewarding two startups must be through the expansion phase and demonstrating an outstanding ability to scale up and develop.
The competition is mainly aiming to promote entrepreneurial initiatives managed by women and/or men, tackling the challenges of women’s inclusion and gender inequalities – whether social, economic, cultural or political – and leveraging digital innovation for their development.
Founded in 2017, the Cairo-based startup Direxiona aims to support more women who want to learn how to drive by using an online platform to match them to female driving instructors. It is essentially a driving platform and community for women by women.
Nayrouz Talaat, Direxiona Founder and CEO says: “We are also working on leading the service to be solely technology-based and delivering the idea of driving through technological tools to raise the performance of the trainers,” Talaat added.
“In Egypt, there was a larger number of girls and women who wanted to learn how to drive and to be more independent but could not do so. Beyond safety concerns, this is mainly because the number of female instructors is low and they are difficult to find and contact.
Through a network of 85 field offices, the AFD currently finance, monitor, and assist more than 2,500 development projects in 108 countries in sectors of energy, healthcare, biodiversity, water, digital technology, and professional training.
About 15 applications were short-listed by AFD experts from among the 300 received, based on their relevance, sustainability and impact on development. A panel of judges made up of six digital technology experts then whittled this list down to choose the 5 winning projects.
