The Safaricom Development Challenge has been launched in Kenya aiming to provide skills in entrepreneurship and technology to budding entry level developers.
Participants will be trained for three months during which they will be expected to develop apps in six categories.
The categories will be agriculture, health, financial inclusion, education, entertainment and utilities.
The developers will also see their apps uploaded to the Safaricom app store for commercialisation.
Following the training the winners of the challenge will be awarded KSh1.5 million ($17,857) while KSh1 million (US$11,905) will be given to the runners up.
Winners in any of the six categories will further get KSh200,000 ($2,380) with the company having set aside KSh3.7 million ($44,048) for the competition.
The challenge, which follows an app challenge in September last year, will help to make Kenya a leader in the world’s mobile phone revolution, according to Joseph Ogutu, Safaricom’s head of strategy and innovation.
“Kenya is spearheading the mobile phone revolution not just in Africa, but on the globe and it therefore goes without saying that the future of technology in Kenya is anchored on the continuous development of sophisticated mobile apps which will address societal gaps,” he said.
Safaricom said winning apps will be judged on the impact on society they are likely to have as well as originality of their ideas, clarity of the idea, ease of implementation and commercial appeal.
“These five standards are critical for any other developer who is determined to be part of this potentially lucrative industry,” added Ogutu.
Successful applicants for the challenge will be admitted into the programme in July with the winning apps being awarded on November 1.
