Listers
Press release for immediate release April 21, 2011 Winners Announced: v2030 ICT Innovation Awards
Eleven companies received a V2030 ICT Innovation Award at a ceremony held in Diani as part of the Kenya ICT Board's Connected Kenya Summit. The Kenya ICT Board and the Kenya Vision 2030 Delivery Secretariat invited companies that have developed solutions that drive economic growth and social development as outlined in Kenya's Vision 2030 to participate in the inaugural Vision 2030 ICT Innovation Awards. The Award is proudly co-sponsored by Accenture Development Partnerships (ADP).
Over 170 companies participated in the online process. All applications were received on an online platform set up by the Kenya ICT Board that allowed applicants to create an account and fill out their application over time. Of the companies that participated in the Call for Applications, 82 successfully completed the process.
The Kenya ICT Board convened a team of seven independent judges representing the ICT private sector, academia, public sector and civil society. The judges began their work on April 13 and reviewed each complete proposal against the criteria outlined in the call for applications. To ensure integrity in the process, Deloitte Consulting are auditing the review process.
The winners are: uzanunua.com Sector: Wholesale and Retail Trade Uzanunua.com enables Kenyans to buy and sell goods online. Payments to uzanunua are facilitated by local systems such as m-pesa, zap, yu cash. Online auction and classifieds website, uzanunua.com has since acquired 13,000 members and growing at 200% per annum. The platform is based on ebay and is easy to use and has 3,000 unique visitors per day and growing. Kenyans now have their online auction and classifieds site where they can shop from their place of comfort. Mbetsa Innovations Ltd Sector: Manufacturing Morris Mbetsa, a young Kenyan invented an anti-theft device that uses SMS technology to both block and track car theft. The system brings the whole concept of vehicle security into one's hand thanks to the mobile phone; it enables car-owners to monitor their vehicle from a distance and even be able to completely stop the vehicle. Morris Mbetsa had just graduated from high school when he came up with this security device. The innovation is an entirely Kenyan designed GPRS tracking device.. AGA KHAN UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL NAIROBI Sector: Health Care Delivery The Aga Khan University Hospital have used ICT to improve their services. They have used a combination of health management information systems (HMIS)and mobile phone technology to improve health care service delivery. With a central database accessible to their entire countrywide network branches, patients are served and monitored using the same file number whenever they visit any of Aga Khan Hospital branch. Electronic capturing of patient diagnosis has simplified reporting on the numbers encountered on particular diseases for a given period. Websimba Ltd Sector: Tourism Websimba's Eat Out website and Eat Out Mobile site allows consumers to search for restaurants based on various criteria such as area location, type of cuisine and/or budget. Users are provided with the most comprehensive restaurant information including opening hours, photos, videos, customer reviews, menus, maps and details of any offers or special events. The end-user can reserve tables using the online booking engine or by calling our customer services advisors. For restaurants, the site provides a low cost online presence and allows better preparation as customers are pre-booking rather than walking in. Ushahidi Social Equity Ushahidi is a non-profit technology company that specializes in developing free and open source software for crowdsourcing, visualization, and interactive mapping. Ushahidi started as an ad hoc group of technologists and bloggers hammering out software in a couple days, trying to figure out a way to gather more and better information about the post-election violence in Kenya in January 2008. It has since been used around the world for mapping instances of violence and disaster relief. Horizon Contact Centers Ltd Sector: Business Process Outsourcing/Offshoring Horizon's HK_V2 Platform is a locally developed web based solution similar to a CRM which allows for integration with a soft phone to make outbound calls and update data real-time. Horizon designed and deployed the solution with a dynamic front end that can be customized to meet data requirements, ability to integrate it to a soft phone in order to initiate calls on preview mode from an existing database of contacts or manually inputted and a dynamic back end database. MOBIKASH AFRIKA LIMITED Secotr: Financial Services MobiKash offers an all-in one independent mobile commerce and banking solution, which allows users to perform a wide range of financial transactions using their mobile phone. It works across all networks and a user can link up to fifteen bank accounts on a real time basis. It gives a user total control of their money anytime anywhere. International Livestock Research Institute Sector: Agriculture Index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) is a promising and exciting innovation in insurance design that allows the risk-management benefits of insurance to be made available to poor and remote clients. The IBLI product being piloted in Marsabit District aims to provide compensation to insured pastoralists in the event of livestock losses due to severe forage scarcity. Incorporating remotely-sensed vegetation data in its design, delivered via mobile ICT-based transactions platforms, and with experimental extension methods used to educate the remote pastoral herders, the IBLI product boasts many firsts in product development. Space Kenya Networks LTD Sector: Gender, Youth and Vulnerable Groups Whive.com is a Social Media Tools Aggregator that offers a platform for SMS, Facebook, Twitter and Mobile Applications that are built for local use in Kenyan and African settings. Whive offers a variety of services. Whive differs from other platforms because they are localizing mobile applications to all Kenyan communities by making them available in local languages. Starting with Swahili, Sheng and English Whive is seeking to initially target the Kenyan youth with its classifieds application. These applications will also form a basis of lingual translation services of key Kenyan languages Virtual Essence Ltd Education and Training MsingiPACK 2011 E-learning/E-revision Solution is a comprehensive digital supplement for upper primary classes under the New 8-4-4 Syllabus, based 100% on Local Content. The content has been generated originally by an Academic Task Force comprising of over 100 teachers, Education Consultants and Curriculum specialists. The tutorials are well structured and sequenced to form a Guided Learning Path while adequately covering everything that the K.I.E syllabus stipulates, including the newly revised Social Studies syllabus that is now based on the New Constitution of Kenya. The KCPE past papers in the programme have been digitized and fully automated under the copyright authority of Kenya National Examinations Council. With the MsingiPACK now available via Mobile Phones, there is value addition to this gadget. ANNIVERSARY LAB Housing and Urbanisation Robert Mburu incorporates home-made gadgets like the touch switches among other bridge detectors to displays number of intruders on a digital display and repulses them with a discharge 10000 volts. The system is linked to a camera that takes over all electrical gadgets in the house including your TV set and records intrusion at instances, it comes with an 8hrs power back up,. The alert system is connected to the GSM Texts owner and if an SMS goes unread, it calls the owner of premise and if not available calls two other sets of numbers. The system can also take up commands and execute them when texted eg 'switch on lights'.
For more information please contact: Kaburo Kobia Kenya ICT Board Project Manager, Local Digital Content e: kkobia@ict.go.ke m: 0729466260 About Kenya ICT Board
The Kenya ICT Board was established by HE President Mwai Kibaki, as a state corporation under the State Corporations Act Cap. 446 on 19th February 2007.
The Kenya ICT Board's mission is to champion and actively enable Kenya to adopt and exploit ICT, through promotion of partnerships, investments and infrastructure growth for socio economic enrichment.
Its vision is that Kenya becomes a top ten global ICT hub by 2030.
The Kenya ICT Board mandate is to: Market: Positioning and promoting Kenya as an ICT destination (locally and internationally), especially promoting Business process Outsourcing (BPO) and Offshoring. Advise: Advise the government on all relevant matters pertaining to the development and promotion of ICT industries in the country Build Capacity: Providing government and other stakeholders with skills, capacity and funding for anchor implementation of ICT projects for development. Manage Projects: Coordinating, directing and implementing anchor ICT projects in development.
Contact For more information or to book interviews please contact: Kaburo Kobia 0729466260
Sincerely,
Kaburo Kobia Project Manager, Local Digital Content Kenya ICT Board
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