African researchers, entrepreneurs and innovators in the field of Information communication and technology will converge in April 2013 for Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) forum focused on developing solutions aimed at stirring development in the continent.
The programme, dubbed ‘Innovation prize for Africa’, requires ICT applicants to have relevant working experiences in solving development challenges in the community by software application development, design and development, enterprise application development, or platform development.
Mobile or wireless technologies should demonstrate how marginalised people can make maximum use of the devices to offer social and economic empowerment benefits with the possibility of creating micro-businesses that generates employment.
Local Language Software must have the definition and implementation of standards such as character, set encoding, keyboard layouts, sorting sequence, locale and ICT terminology, as well as local language computing to support access and generation of local language content.
The organisers of the event describe African innovators and business people as those who are not aggressive. Innovation prize for Africa has the objective of drawing attention towards innovative work, nurture and support entrepreneurs’ vision with the prize award as a motivational factor.
They aspire to encourage innovations that would lead to development of new products and increase of efficiency in Africa.
Also, the efforts of upcoming African men and women pursuing technology, science, business and engineering courses will benefit from the award.
The event, whose venue IPA will announce in March 2013, is also targeted at mobilizing leaders across the continent to think of innovation in major sectors of the economy.
The competition will increase commercialisation of research and development, funding of start-ups, growth and adoption of new and emerging technologies, according to the event’s organisers.
Applicants in health and wellbeing, environment, energy, water, agriculture, agribusiness, manufacturing and service industries should also submit their projects online
The winning proposal will be awarded a cash prize of US$100,000, while the runner-ups will receive US$25,000 each.
Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA is supported by United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African Innovation Foundation (AIF).
In the previous challenge, 458 applications were from 38 countries in Africa. Egyptian engineer, Mohammed Sanad had his winning project of creating a base-station antenna that can facilitate upgrades to more advanced mobile networks in developing countries, in last year’s prize.
The registration deadline is on October 31, 2012.
