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Egerton graduates win Safaricom Appwiz Challenge

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Egerton University graduates are the winners of this year’s Safaricom Appwiz Challenge. The team pipped competition from other universities with Magazine Reel, an app that allows students to access latest campus news through their mobile phones.

Magazine Reel compiles stories and notices from university administration campuses and presents it in an easy-to-read format for the students to stay updated on what is breaking from the university and do not have time to visit the bulletin boards. The shift from the conventional way of watching news as well as buying newspapers is gathering steam with most people relying on online platforms for news.

“While there are many people who still wait to watch the news every evening and read newspapers every morning, studies have shown that there are many tech-savvy youth who would rather access the news content on the go through their smart devices,” said Joseph Ogutu, the Director for Strategy and Innovation at Safaricom.

The Appwiz competition began last year and this year’s challenge required participants to develop solutions under five categories; Mobile for Good and Community Development, Smart Business and Cloud Innovation, Financial Inclusion, Youth, Entertainment, Games and Media and Infrastructure and Utilities. Guide Rig, a communication and marketing solution for businesses won in the Smart Business and Cloud Innovation category and were the overall runners up in the challenge.

Other category winners were Ujirani, a community based security application, in the Mobile for Good and Community Development category, while in Infrastructure and Utilities category the award went to Smart Travel which is a solution that provides motorists with road information and also helps them know whether they have exceeded their alcohol limit per sitting.

The overall winner took home Ksh. 1.7 million, while the runners up were awarded Ksh. 1.2 million. Category winners were each rewarded with Ksh. 200,000. The amounts will be disbursed on an agreed milestone basis between the start-up and Safaricom based on continued development of the Mobile ICT start-up.

Mr Ogutu challenged developers and innovators to take advantage of Safaricom 4G/ LTE-Advanced network, adding that data usage has been on the increase among customers, with a 24.3% growth registered in the half year financial period ending September 2014.

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