Four teams have been awarded prize money totalling KSh240,000 (US$2,800) after being crowned winners of the Kenyan version of the m2Work hackathon.
The four winning teams are:
Position 1 (KSh100,000/ US$1,200): Tafsiri
Provides companies and organisations with translations of specific information into the language of the local community, something that might become popular with Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) operating in rural areas.
Position 2 (KShs70,000/ US$840): Smart Blackboard
Allows students doing homework or revising for exams to pose questions and receive answers from qualified teachers.
Position 3 (KShs40,000/ US$480): MobiAgent
A solution that will give its users the ability to act as agents and receive commission on any product, such as event tickets, they sell to people in their phone contacts.
Position 4 (KShs30,000/ US$360): Kaisari
A compliance and authenticity monitoring system that will enable organizations or individuals to track down phoney products and individuals.
A further US$2,000 stage one traction funding will be awarded to two of the most outstanding teams that show the potential to develop their prototypes into finished products. Stage two traction of US$5,000 will be awarded by m:lab East Africa as seed investment to the team with the most traction on their finished product and intend to grow it into an enterprise.
m2Work, which stands for mobile micro-work, was created with the objective of realising the job-creation potential of mobile phones, as well as identifying problems that could be solved by enabling the underprivileged people of the world to access the digital economy and enable the rest of the world to benefit from their intelligence.
m2Work was formed earlier this year by infoDev — an innovation and entrepreneurship program run by the World Bank — in partnership with Nokia, UKaid and the government of Finland. Together, they launched the m2Work Online Challenge, which yielded 939 ideas, 96 percent of which came from developing and emerging economies.
The hackathon was conducted across all the five m:Labs in the world from September 15 to 16.
