The HiiL Justice Accelerator this week wrapped up a landmark 14-day marathon of six events across Africa and Ukraine, highlighting and judging the world’s most innovative justice entrepreneurs.
Justice entrepreneurship is a new field, and involves entrepreneurs who are developing new services, apps, websites, platforms, or community initiatives that expand access to justice systems. The HiiL Justice Accelerator scouts, supports, and accelerates these ideas into sustainable and impactful organisations that can scale worldwide.
The events – held in Tunis, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Kampala, Kiev, and Lagos, supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands – were the culmination of a competition in which justice entrepreneurs compete for their part of 160,000 EUR in funding. A total of 36 finalists were pitching to juries of local experts in law, social impact, business, and technology in hopes to be one of 6-10 startups to win equity-free grant awards.
The events were a landmark success in all six locations, attracting top-tier media attention as well as standing-room-only attendance.
Those selected to win the awards will arrive in The Hague, Netherlands, in December to participate in the Justice Entrepreneurship School, the world’s only educational initiative for this field of startup. This week-long programme exists to introduce entrepreneurs to startup basics from finance to impact assessment.
The HiiL Justice Accelerator is a yearly competition. Next year’s call for entries will take place between March and July 2016. More information is available at www.innovatingjustice.com.
