13 November, 2024
JA Europe, JA Africa and EIT Food are proud to announce the winners of Foodathon 2024, an event uniting African and European students to address global agri-food challenges. After four weeks of ideation and collaboration, CarbonTrail from Slovakia and Ivory Coast emerged as the champion, impressing the judges with their innovative solution for more sustainable food systems.
Starting on UN World Food Day on 16 October and closing during COP 29 on 13 November, several hundreds of students from Africa and Europe worked together to come up with ideas to solve today’s agri-food systems challenges.
The 10 finalist teams included:
- Aquavision x Innovatech (Zimbabwe and Georgia)
- CarbonTrail (Slovakia and Côte d’Ivoire)
- Eco Plates (Ukraine and Ghana)
- EcoRoots (Spain and Zimbabwe)
- Future Vibes Future Health (Türkiye and Ukraine)
- GreenDream (Uganda and Greece)
- Montivoré (Montenegro and Côte d’Ivoire)
- SmartStream (Germany and Uganda)
- Sustainify (Nigeria and Greece)
- The Digital AgriGurus (Uganda and Greece)
Showcasing diverse ideas to tackle food system issues, their achievements highlight the power of cross-continental teamwork and youth innovation.
With their business idea, CarbonTrail has the ambition to tackle carbon emissions from production, transportation and storage of food. The CarbonTrail Score, using a similar approach to the Nutri-Score launched recently to inform buyers about product healthiness, indicates how “green and sustainable a food product is, with five levels(A-E) based on CO2 emissions during manufacturing. The CarbonTrail Score would be featured on the front-of-packaging for an easy assessment by consumers, and a back-of-pack label to provide details on the CO2 produced during production, transport, and storage. The idea was deemed innovative, realistic, and very impactful.
The international and high-level jury included:
- Igor Bodnár, Director InnoTech ‘Performance in Experiments’, Taste, dsm-Firmenich
- Javiera Charad Wilckens, Sustainability Manager Nestle Europe
- Michail Karypidis, Winner of Foodathon 2023, JA Greece Alumn, Co-founder and Head of Marketing & Communications at Vefiber
- Dr Vincenzo Lorusso, Policy Officer – Science, Technology and Innovation cooperation with the African Union and bilateral cooperation with Rwanda, Nigeria and South Africa, European Commission, DG Research & Innovation
- Ayanda Nyikana, Senior Vice President of the Rising Leaders portfolio, PMI South Africa
- Mario Roccaro, President of the jury, Programme Manager Education, EIT Food
- Katja Seidenschnur, Head of Sustainability Europe, Nestlé
The winners of the Foodathon will be invited to the European largest entrepreneurship festival, Gen-E, where they will further showcase their business idea.
Congratulations to the students who took part in this 4th edition of the Foodathon, and produced brilliant and innovative ideas for our agri-food systems.
About JA Europe
JA Europe is the largest and leading organisation in Europe dedicated to inspiring and preparing young people to succeed. For over 100 years, JA Worldwide has delivered hands-on, experiential learning in entrepreneurship, work readiness and financial health. In the last school year, the JA Europe network in over 40 countries provided 6 million learning experiences for youth in online, in person and blended formats with the support of nearly 110,000 teachers and almost 90,000 business volunteers. In 2024, JA Worldwide was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the third nomination in three years.
