Hult Prize Finale: HEC trio for the win!

HEC is proud to have three of its students competing in the Hult Prize finale, a competition which challenges start-ups to tackle a different issue set by Bill Clinton every year; this year’s challenge is “Solving Youth Unemployment”.

The Hult Prize, also known as the Nobel Prize for students, is the fruit of a partnership between the Hult family, the United Nation and Bill Clinton. For its 10th edition, the theme is ‘For us, by us, solving youth unemployment’, with an aim for the start-ups entering this competition to create more than 10,000 jobs, in the next decade for young people.
The Prize Finals will be held in the United Nations in New York, and this year, a team constituted of three students from HEC Paris made it to the 6 selected finalist teams, out of more than 100,000 applications. 
The HEC trio went to Uganda, and talked to farmers to understand what their issues were. Their start-up, named ProTeen, created a circular economy for farmers in Uganda, by transforming organic waste thanks to black soldier fly larvae, who transform this waste into feed and fertilizers, which are then used by farmers for their livestock. The livestock is then bought by consumers, and the organic waste produced is retransformed into feed and fertilizers.
69% of organic waste in Sub-Saharan Africa is burned or thrown away, and is at the origin of almost half of all carbon emissions in that region This zero-waste technique of tackling the growing waste issue, all the while creating jobs for young people in Africa. 
Overall, ProTeen really took to heart the advice given by Bill Gates, who once said: ‘Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future’, and they went further by also providing attractive jobs for young people in Uganda and tackling the waste generation as well as climate change.