The winners of the Huawei Challenge were recently unveiled. KaroPay, an Android app by Masai Abel Jevayi from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), was one of the winners with his app KaroPay. “Karo” is a Swahili word meaning fees. KaroPay enables parents and students to pay school fees using their phones.
2. Ifuel: An app that helps you fuel at your nearest location and also compares the pump prices for your convenience. It was developed by Kevin M. Mwendwa from Moi University.
3. Smart Milk Collection Clerk: This app helps to manage dairy product movement and inventory. Waweru D. Gatuhu and Nkonge Cleophe from Moi University were the product developers.
4. Dr. Sider: Paul Njoroge and Moses Ndungu from Nairobi University, developed this app that helps doctors keep track of their patient’s information, records and feedback.
5. Manyatta: JKUAT developer Shihembetsa Edna Mugoshi, developed an app that property buyers and sellers can meet.
The overall winner, Masai Abel Jevayi was awarded with cash award of Kshs 50,000, a training voucher for mobile entrepreneurship, and a Huawei S7 Slim laptop. The cash prize for the second, third, fourth and fifth were: 30,000 for iFuel, 20,000 for Smart Milk Collection Clerk, 15,000 for Dr. Sider and 10,000 to Manyatta. They were also given free Huawei laptops and merchandise.
The Huawei Challenge attracted over 80 applications and they were narrowed to 30 for closer scrutiny then the 5 winners were chosen. The challenge targeted Kenyan Universities as they are a cocoon for future developers.
“Kenya is seen as an innovation capital of application development in the Sub Saharan Africa, through such initiatives we hope to tap and promote localized content in universities and spur growth in global markets” Li Dafeng, President of Huawei East and South Africa region, said.
Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore, expressed his positive sentiments about Kenya being the region leader in IT and app development. We will continue to identify opportunities for collaboration with other ICT solution providers and institutions of higher learning to support the development of relevant Kenyan applications content. This will in turn improve the uptake of data services in this market.”
