Nairobi, Kenya
Safaricom and has announced the launch of Appstar, a unique mobile applications developer challenge that will see the winning apparatus’ designer take home a grand prize of Kshs 1 million.
The deal in which Vodafone, the company that owns 35% shares in Safaricom, has a stake in, commenced yesterday and will run up to the 16th November when the winner will be announced.
Speaking at the launch, Safaricom’s director of corporate affairs Nzioka Waita said that the next phase of real innovation in the mobility space would come from local app developers.
“The Appstar challenge is the next logical step in deepening local talent giving developers a chance to compete against the best in Africa but also reap from their innovation,” he said.
The competition will feature entries in six categories, which include games/entertainment, health, education, agriculture, financial inclusion and productivity. The applications being developed are also expected to run on Android, BlackBerry, Symbian or Java operating systems.
The winners and runners up will also have an opportunity to compete with finalists from the other six countries for the grand prize from Vodafone in Johannesburg in December.
The regional counties participating in the challenge include Kenya, Lesotho, South Africa, Tanzania, Egypt, Ghana and Qatar.
The challenge comes at a time when huge app development talent exists in the emerging markets and the developers who can provide applications suitable for the respective markets.
The challenge is also expected to showcase the depth of the talent and give developers a chance to benchmark themselves against regional peers.
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