Congratulations to three Mastercard Foundation Scholars – Desmond Agyei, Abass Abubakar, and Joan Sseggane Nantaba – who earned top prizes at last month’s Trinity Hall Catalysts Showcase!
The event, a collaboration between Trinity Hall College and the Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation, brought together 20 social and environmental entrepreneurs from across a range of disciplines. Each delivered an eight-minute pitch explaining the impact their venture hopes to achieve, progress so far and how they would use the funding, before taking questions from the judges.
The Trinity Hall Catalysts programme takes participants on a structured venture development journey throughout the academic year leading up to the Showcase event, complementing the climate-focused Scholars Entrepreneurship Fund entrepreneurship and venture development programme.
Having had some time to process the win and plan their next steps, Desmond, Abubakar and Joan reflect on the main lessons learnt and share their next steps:
Through Okuafo Adanfo, Desmond is establishing a community composting hub to get nutrient-dense compost into the hands of Ghana's cocoa farmers.
"Winning the top prize of £3,500 is a huge vote of confidence. It's really a credit to the whole team on the ground in Ghana, especially the production manager, Henry Sampram and everyone who pushed this idea forward with me in Cambridge.
Over the next six to twelve months, this funding will enable us to move from a tested prototype to our first real production run, including completing our certifications, purchasing basic processing equipment for our community composting hub, and getting our compost into the hands of the first farmers."
Abubakar's venture, A&A Cashew Bioethanol, is converting wasted cashew apples into pharmaceutical and industrial‑grade ethanol in Ghana, cutting emissions and supplying local markets through a scalable circular‑economy model.
"Winning gave me something I did not expect; permission to fully believe in what we are building. As a Mastercard Foundation Scholar from Ghana, you carry a deep sense of responsibility to the communities that shaped you. But there are moments when self-doubt creeps in, especially when you are building something that has never been done before in your context.
The Showcase reminded me that being rooted in your community is not a limitation. It is your greatest competitive advantage. It gave me the confidence to walk into any room and speak about A&A Cashew Bioethanol not as an idea but as a solution that has been tested and approved."
Joan leads Ugandan-based SupportCycle, redesigning period underwear using indigenous knowledge and locally available natural materials, simultaneously reducing plastic waste and providing locally appropriate solutions to period poverty.
"Preparing an eight-minute pitch forced me to strip away the technical complexities and focus entirely on the core 'why' of SupportCycle. It forced me to ask: what is the one thing I need this room to feel? The answer was simple: that menstruation is a climate problem, an economic problem, and a social problem, and that one product, made in Uganda from indigenous materials, sits at the intersection of all three.
It made me realise that true innovation isn't about how complicated your product is; it's about how elegantly it solves a real problem."