Four African projects improving lives can build on success with support from Expo 2020 Dubai

Four African initiatives empowering women and smallholder farmers are to receive grants from global social impact programme Expo Live, run by organisers of the next World Expo, Expo 2020 Dubai.
Innovators from Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania are among 26 projects from 22 countries selected in the third cycle of Expo Live’s flagship Innovation Impact Grant Programme, following a rigorous evaluation process that included live presentations in Dubai.
Competition was particularly strong in this cycle, with more than 1,200 applications from 114 countries.
Expo Live supports projects whose creative solutions to pressing challenges improve people’s lives or preserve the planet – or both. These innovators will join an existing community of Expo Live Global Innovators, bringing the total to 70 grantees from 44 countries.
Among the new Global Innovators is a Ghanaian woman who is empowering other women by teaching them how to grow a local wild grain called fonio on abandoned lands.
Through her social enterprise Unique Quality Products, Salma Abdulai engages disenfranchised women to farm abandoned land, helping them to provide for their families and gain financial independence.