NAIROBI
Google has announced five winners of the “Africa Connected” competition, who will each get $25,000 (Sh2.1 million). Among them is Sitawa Wafula from Kenya, who has used Google Blogger to establish an award winning blog on mental health in East Africa; Eunice Namirembe (Uganda), who runs The Medical Concierge Group to help Ugandan communities access quality healthcare and information and Eseoghene Odiete (Nigeria) who learned how to create handbags using Google Search and YouTube.
Others are Eric Obuh of Nigeria (aka Vocal Slender), a former dump site scavenger who has recorded songs and shares them on YouTube and Christopher Panford (Ghana) who runs a transport company and uses Google Maps to constantly monitor the location of the vehicles.
The five winners were selected from over 2,200 entries across 35 countries, by a panel of judges as well as public voters. “There are over 1 billion people living in Sub-Saharan Africa and currently 16% of them are online. With ‘Africa Connected’, we celebrate how the web is contributing to the socio-economic development of the continent,” said Affiong Osuchukwu, Google Lead for the Africa Connected initiative.
Each winner shares a unique perspective of how they have used the internet to solve a problem, earn a living, or create opportunities, not just for themselves but also for their community. The winners will also have the opportunity to work with a Google Sponsor over a six-month period to further their online business success.
The competition was launched in August 2013, calling entrepreneurs, creatives, innovators and web-lovers to share stories of how the web has transformed their lives and work.
