A Nigerian entrepreneur has won the top prize at the Jack Ma Foundation's first annual Africa Netpreneur Prize Initiative (ANPI).
Nigerian entrepreneur Temie Giwa-Tubosun, founder and CEO of LifeBank, took home the top $250,000 cash prize from the $1 million available from the ANPI, which was started by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma.
Under the ANPI, the Jack Ma Foundation will award a $1 million grant to 10 African entrepreneurs every year for the next 10 years. This year's top winner LifeBank is a Lagos-based blood and oxygen delivery company that connects registered blood banks to hospitals and patients in need of urgent blood supplies.
Giwa-Tubosun said: "The Africa Netpreneur Prize will give me the resources to grow LifeBank and expand our presence in Nigeria and throughout the rest of Africa. I look forward to continuing my journey to solve problems and make a significant impact on the future of Africa."
At  the ANPI 'African Business Heroes' event held in Accra, Ghana, Giwa-Tubosun also announced that LifeBank will begin blood delivery via Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or drones to add to their mobility fleet in getting blood to patients in places that are hard to reach.
She mentioned: "After running our operations for three years we knew that there were some patients we could not reach on time. Like areas where there are bandits on the road so we need to fly." She pointed out that the use of drones will only be undertaken to  supply blood in emergency situations where patients are hard to reach.
In October, LifeBank partnered with the Ethiopian government's Information Network Security Agency (INSA) to test run drone delivery in Ethiopia. "What we did in Ethiopia... was like a research project to show that we can deliver these critical supplies [blood]. We did that for a couple of weeks and it was successful," Giwa-Tubosun claimed.
