The third annual CIO 100 Awards, which celebrates organisations using ICT in innovative ways, concluded in Rwanda on Friday, with Kenyan companies scooping the top three positions.
The competition, themed “Value creation through innovation”, attracted more than 300 participants from across East Africa, a move CIO has been pushing to make possible for companies to tap into business segments and optimise processes shared in its magazine publications in the entire region.
SK Macharia’s Empire Royal Media services was named the most innovative company, with head of ICT Wainaina Mungai, named CIO of the year.
Royal Media was praised for its use of an in-house vault application together with its web-based library search system.
The company has more than 10 radio stations, eight of them streaming online, together with its TV station Citizen TV, reaching one million viewers on the internet every month.
Citizen TV also pioneered the use of Google Hangouts on television for International Womens’ Day.
Kenya’s Judiciary was ranked second. Its vast use of video conferencing terminals, digitising its manual records, use of integrated mobile money transfer to ease payment of traffic fines and formulating the judiciary information and communication policy strategic plan contributed to its performance.
The Judiciary also topped the public sector category with their ticketing system.
Under the leadership of the new chief justice Willy Mutunga, the Kenya Judiciary has also implemented a help desk and ticketing system supporting 112 court stations and includes stakeholders such as the police, prisons’ department and Lawyers’ Society of Kenya.
The use of the Health Information Management System at Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital saw the pediatric hospital ranked number 3.
The system has allowed patient and medical staff to access information through the online platform, and helped Gertrude top the health category. The hospital also uses automated billing and automated updates for patients bills
The CIO 2013 awards also recognised companies who performed well in their respective sectors.
Kenyan network operator Safaricom topped the communication sector with its cloud computing in the Kenya Integrated Mobile Maternal, Newborn & Child Health Information Platform that enables community health workers to manage and run their patients, mothers and their children, on an Android enabled app.
Paddy Micro-investments solutions Pesa Pata won in the financial sector – a service that offers loans through scratch cards.
Other notable winners were the Sarova group of hotels in the hospitality sector and East African Breweries in the manufacturing industry.
The event was attended by Rosemary Mbabazi, Rwanda’s permanent secretary in the Ministry of Youth and ICT, alongside Patrick Nyirishema, head of IT at the Rwanda Development Board (RDB).
