Students and developers have less than two weeks to apply for the Safaricom Appstar challenge that will see mobile application developers compete for the grand prize of Sh1 million.
Safaricom – which has partnered with Vodafone to run the local competition – says on its website, that the challenge aims to promote local content.
“One of our objectives is to promote and foster local content development by providing them with an opportunity to showcase and publicize their apps,” notes Safaricom.
The winning apps will be hosted on the Safaricom and Vodafone app stores for use by customers. Registration for the app challenge will close on 26th October while all entries must be submitted by November 2nd.
AppStar will have local and international finals. Local first runners up will get Sh500,000 while category winners get Sh100,000. The two-top local finalists will compete against other finalists in Africa and Middle East.
Vodafone is running the AppStar competition in six countries; Egypt, Lesotho, South Africa, Qatar, Kenya and Tanzania. Both Vodafone and Safaricom are encouraging students to apply for the challenge.
Vodafone is calling on students, software developers and architects to take advantage of the opportunity to create apps that will be distributed in Africa and Middle East.
“This competition is open to all developers and students wishing to participate in the competition, provided that they are resident in Kenya,” adds Safaricom.
Safaricom clarifies that participants younger than 18 years must have legal guardian to represent them and accept the prize on their behalf.
Kenyan University students have participated and won in previous app challenges and hackathons organized by various ICT companies. In June this year, three students from JKUAT and UoN won the top prizes at the Nokia app challenge.
Safaricom’s app challenge is open to Nokia’s Symbian platform, Java, Android and Blackberry. Participants are allowed to submit more than one app for the AppStar competition.
The judges will evaluate submitted apps according to functionality, originality, local relevance, and conformity to standards and regulatory codes of practice.
To register go to http://www.vodafoneappstar.com/safaricom/
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October 17, 2012 at 1:44 pm
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