NYU Stern Student Works With 2019 Hult Prize Finalist
ProTeen is a Ugandan-based impact venture that transforms urban organic waste into sustainable protein feed and fertilizer for East African farmers. During his IBEX entrepreneurship exchange semester at HEC Paris this spring, Stern Senior Jordan Wolken worked with members of the ProTeen team who were finishing their Master’s degrees there. Called MAWA at the time, ProTeen was preparing to rebrand itself before pitching in the $1 million Hult Prize finals at the United Nations last month.
Interview completed by Ludivine Berouard, Alessandra Mantovani, and Jordan Wolken.
How did the idea of ProTeen originate?
In late 2017 Ludivine Berouard and Tommie Hooft were hired by Jacobs Douwe Egberts to conduct a consultancy project to uncover the sustainability challenges that farmers faced in Uganda. This experience and meeting their third co-founder Boby Ogwang, led to the creation of their first startup Marula Creative Consultancy.
Later, in their research they discovered that 70% of farmers in Uganda are mixed farmers relying on an ecosystem of coffee, livestock and crops. Yet, poultry farmers were no longer able to access fishmeal, their primary source of poultry feed. This is due to overfishing in Lake Victoria which has led to reduced availability, high cost and low quality of fishmeal. Because of this, farmers are not able to sustain a profitable business and meet the rising demand for high quality protein. This is when the idea of using insects as an alternative to fish meal protein was born.
ProTeen was officially founded in 2018 and uses the black soldier fly insect to process waste into sustainable livestock feed and soil fertilizer. By providing a circular solution, we make farming more profitable throughout Africa. We solve not only one challenge, but many interlinked challenges in Uganda such as access to quality animal feed and fertilizer, waste management, and youth employment.
How did you validate your idea?
In April 2018, Boby, Ludivine and Tommie approached RVO, The Netherlands Enterprise Agency with our project for sustainable development in Uganda.
We pitched that ProTeen will tackle two global problems: lack of sustainable waste management and lack of high quality protein feed and fertilizer for farmers. With our solution we could directly reduce carbon emissions and improve the livelihood of local communities.
With a grant from RVO and a partnership with Professor Kabi from Makerere University, we built our first prototype farm at the Makerere Research Institute. We trained and employed over a dozen youth and today process over 15 tonnes of waste at our prototype farm.
What milestones have you achieved thus far?
As part of the Sustainability and Social Innovation Master’s program at HEC University in Paris, Ludivine Berouard and Tommie Hooft were joined by Alessandra Mantovani, a fellow student, to participate in the Start-up Launchpad program. As one of the two winning teams, we were awarded a place at the HEC incubator in Station F, the world’s largest start-up incubator. These experiences propelled our network, gave us access to mentors and the platform to share our ideas, such as our recent Ted X Talk. We are truly grateful for the support that HEC Paris has given us in launching our start-up while studying.
Meanwhile in Uganda, we gained key partnerships and pre-orders to prove our business model, such as a recent public-private partnership with Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) so that we can improve the solid waste management (SWM) services in the city. Additionally, we partnered with Makerere University, where we currently recruit many youth from and where our farm is located.
And of course this all helped us prepare for the Hult Prize Accelerator.
What was Jordan working on while at Station F?
Jordan was a key player in the development of ProTeen’s brand and strategy. During our time at Station F, Jordan wrote grants, explored funding opportunities and pitched at HEC Seed day. He also helped build parts of the ProTeen website and prepared us for the Hult Prize semi-finals in London.
How did you first hear about the Hult Prize competition and what made you decide to enter?
This year’s Hult challenge was to create 10,000 jobs for disconnected youth through a social venture. As a social enterprise based in Uganda, this a challenge that we could not ignore.
Like many other African countries, youth unemployment in Uganda is very high and is estimated to be between 62% to 84%. This is beginning, and will continue to, put immense strain on Uganda’s economy if youth cannot find employment opportunities. Considering that 85% of the available jobs are in the agriculture sector, we need to find ways to make agriculture more attractive to the next generation of Ugandans.
When we saw the 2019 Hult challenge, we realized that our project was uniquely positioned to tackle youth unemployment in Africa.
What did it feel like to pitch ProTeen at the UN?
The experience was unforgettable. We had two weeks notice between when our team was invited to attend until when we would be live pitching on stage in the UN’s ECOSOC chamber. The chamber seats 200, in agora-style seating, and we were center stage with blinding bright lights with which we could only see the panel of 12 judges sitting in front of us. For us, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase our hard work and our confidence in this project to the world - which shone through in our pitch - (despite having a very short time frame to prepare for the United Nations).
This year the six startup finalists emerged from a global participant pool of more than 250,000 representing 121 countries around the world. We were honored to represent this year’s cohort with five other amazing teams who will have a great impact around the world - we will all remember this day forever.
You can watch the Livestream of our pitch starting at 1:09:00: http://webtv.un.org/watch/hult-prize-2019-finals-at-the-un/6086307827001/
What are your short-term plans for ProTeen within the next year?
ProTeen has developed ‘Do-It-Yourself’ Kits so that youth can create their own protein and fertilizer using their own farm waste. Most youth do not engage in agriculture because traditional cash crops, such as coffee, can take up to two years before they will benefit from their first harvest. Our model is low-cost, and within three weeks youth will have both a new revenue source and a lower cost of fertilizer which they can use on their traditional crops.
In order to scale our impact even further, ProTeen will work with KCCA, the local municipality in charge of the city and who’s vision it is to transform Kampala into a vibrant, attractive and sustainable city. Through KCCA we will bring ProTeen to an urban warehouse and will receive pre-sorted organic waste, allowing us to give value to waste that would otherwise go to the already overflowing Kiteezi landfill. Our first warehouse will redirect and transform 4% of Kampala’s waste, allowing us to create high quality and sustainable protein for commercial fish and poultry farmers. Each warehouse will provide jobs to over 10 urban youth.
What do you aspire to achieve over the long-term with ProTeen?
ProTeen is committed to inclusive growth along the entire value chain - empowering all stakeholders to revolutionize the local agriculture sector. With our solution we know that we can directly reduce carbon emissions and improve the livelihood of our communities, and this keeps us going every day. We look forward to working with our partners to achieve this and hope that ProTeen can become an example of how business can be both profitable and create long-lasting impact.
