Safaricom appwiz challenge. . 47teams took part

On the 27th of July @iBizAfrica in part­ner­ship with Safar­icom and Inves­ted Devel­op­ment hos­ted the Safar­icom App wiz Hack­a­thon. The Safar­icom App Wiz Chal­lenge is an ini­ti­at­ive by Safar­icom that is aimed at enabling youths in Kenya deploy applic­a­tions in the app mar­kets and at the same time make money in the pro­cess. Designed to identify and develop suc­cess­ful early stage mobile com­pan­ies, the chal­lenge will provide a three months incub­a­tion period for qual­i­fied par­ti­cipants who will be natured and ment­ored on all stages of applic­a­tion devel­op­ment and monetization.

The hack­a­thon attrac­ted applic­ants from all over Kenya. Developers sub­mit­ted applic­a­tions in six dif­fer­ent cat­egor­ies, namely; Agri­cul­ture, Edu­ca­tion, Health, Fin­ance, pro­ductiv­ity & util­ity and Games. Over 110 con­test­ants took part in the hackathon.

On the mater­ial day 47 ideas and teams made it to the semi-​final of the chal­lenge which took place at @iBizAfrica, the busi­ness incub­ator in Strath­more Uni­ver­sity situ­ated at the Stu­dent Cen­ter build­ing on the 5th floor. The aim of the hack­a­thon was to fur­ther short­l­ist the num­ber of sub­mit­ted applic­a­tions to 18 that would pro­ceed to the next stage which is a three month all expenses paid for busi­ness incub­a­tion at @iBizAfrica. This meant that three of the best applic­a­tions from each cat­egory will be picked to pro­ceed to the next level.

The teams worked hard on the present­a­tions they would pitch to the panel of judges. The judging panel was com­prised of lead­ing tech­no­logy and innov­a­tion experts who listened and judged the applic­a­tions in the dif­fer­ent categories.
The moment of truth came where the teams finally met the judges and pitched for ten minutes. Some teams came out jovial oth­ers depressed, but all have to wait for the judges ver­dict to know who will make it into the @iBizAfrica incub­a­tion pro­gram. Suc­cess­ful con­test­ants will join the incub­a­tion pro­gram on from the 12th of August to the 25th of Octo­ber this year. The final award cere­mony will be 1st of Novem­ber 2013.

Visit link for more details about the Safar­iom App Wiz Challenge