The 3rd annual Community innovation awards by Orange Uganda held on 8th August rewarded innovative students for the mobile applications they developed for social good under health, agriculture and education categories.
This year’s challenge attracted 72 entries from which 20 made it to the final round. With a mandate to fulfill a corporate social responsibility, Orange Uganda partnered with various organisations such as; Huawei as a technology partner, Vision Group as media partner, College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology as academic partner and CEOSummit as training and mentoring partner.
The MD Hauwei Uganda Mr. Radoslaw Kedzia thanked the innovative students for their participation as he announced the Huawei Y300 android smartphones that were given to all finalists of the day. Amid cheers he boasted of Huawei’s position as a leading smartphones maker and distributor worldwide only behind Samsung and iPhone.
In the 3rd position was LuundaLite an android app–William Luyinda, artn Katamba and Ibrahim Ssekabembe from Busitema university–developed to assist animal breeders manage their farms easily. The beta version that currently accommodates poultry farmers provides vaccination schedules,diagnosis for various diseases,information about veterinary shops and feed stores and also an interactive platform where farmers share information amongst themselves. They won UGX 2.5 M and 6 months internship at Orange Uganda.
In the 2nd position was MensPreg–developed by Dut Athian and Joyce Nambalirwa from International College of Health sciences–an application that uses predictive formulations in helping ladies track their monthly periods. In hindsight it seeks to mitigate unwanted pregnancies based on ovalution schedules and also predict the time of conception and delivery. They won UGX 5 M and 12 months internship at Orange Uganda.
In the 1st position was AgroMarketDay–developed by Lisa Katusiime and Isaac Omiat from Makerere university–is an android mobile app that helps farmers dealing in agricultural products link easily to buyers thereby cutting out the unnecessary and exploitative middleman. It shows an updated list of different markets in Uganda highlighting the market conditions interms of supply vis-a-vis demand. They won UGX 10 M and 12 months internship at Orange Uganda.
Notably, the winners’ goals were to develop USSD versions of their apps to tap into the majority of the target market who are not smartphone holders.
In his key note address, Uganda’s Prime minister Hon(Rt.) Amama Mbabazi encouraged the finalists to go out to the real world and further innovate solutions to bolster social change and development.
Image via NewVision