3rd. Orange Community Innovation Awards
This week I had the privileged of attending an event the orange community innovations award http://orange.ug/ciawards/ held at Makerere University by Orange Uganda.
Every year, the company hosts an competition for application developers which in my view achieves quite a lot in the development of Uganda's vast youthful intellectual pool.
This event was created to target three broad categories.
Health
Agriculture
Education
In my view there was probably room for another category...security although you could argue that each of the categories presented is indirectly related to the security of the country. But my view was that there was room for one more category.
I was unable to visit all the presenters and would find it a little unfair to showcase individual projects. However here are some of the suggestions that I have come up with.
Naturally, some links between applications and use were simple and easy to spot and the potential of partnerships was in my view vast. Agriculture related application had potential in a nation which boasts about 80% of it's population devoted to farming.
Some of the entrants chose to tackle broad categories (poultry) while others chose to focus on more specific challenges like diseases in Plantain. A similar effort was seen with other categories like that of health (general health versus specific problems like diabetes).
The few solutions which had similar names varied in design and focus. The choice was between applications whose data was available online (required internet) and those which did not require a connection (rural).
The participants which were show cased for the exhibition came in two categories. Single entrants and groups entries. The few that I was able to see spoke of the challenge of designing for simple phone markets even if many were willing to create for up market smart phones.
There were representatives from Busitema, Makerere University and Uganda Martyrs University.
I have written in brief about the telecoms and presented as good a picture to describe what parts of the market are available. Orange telecoms innovation awards is a good attempt to make an entry into a field with a lot of potential.
There are many benefits to this.
Firstly, Orange telecom realizes is that you need to have the techies on your side, using your technology and getting familiar with your platform. This capitalizes on the availability of social media and makes use of word of mouth not just to promote the event but also to draw people in to the network.
In addition to this the innovation awards are a useful tool to provide students with an introduction into their respective fields especially where very few internships are available for useful practice. The advantage of this is that students are taught a lot more about presentation and group dynamics as they struggle to put together their plans and develop strategies for marketing amongst other things.
Every year, the company hosts an competition for application developers which in my view achieves quite a lot in the development of Uganda's vast youthful intellectual pool.
This event was created to target three broad categories.
Health
Agriculture
Education
In my view there was probably room for another category...security although you could argue that each of the categories presented is indirectly related to the security of the country. But my view was that there was room for one more category.
I was unable to visit all the presenters and would find it a little unfair to showcase individual projects. However here are some of the suggestions that I have come up with.
Naturally, some links between applications and use were simple and easy to spot and the potential of partnerships was in my view vast. Agriculture related application had potential in a nation which boasts about 80% of it's population devoted to farming.
Some of the entrants chose to tackle broad categories (poultry) while others chose to focus on more specific challenges like diseases in Plantain. A similar effort was seen with other categories like that of health (general health versus specific problems like diabetes).
The few solutions which had similar names varied in design and focus. The choice was between applications whose data was available online (required internet) and those which did not require a connection (rural).
The participants which were show cased for the exhibition came in two categories. Single entrants and groups entries. The few that I was able to see spoke of the challenge of designing for simple phone markets even if many were willing to create for up market smart phones.
There were representatives from Busitema, Makerere University and Uganda Martyrs University.
I have written in brief about the telecoms and presented as good a picture to describe what parts of the market are available. Orange telecoms innovation awards is a good attempt to make an entry into a field with a lot of potential.
There are many benefits to this.
Firstly, Orange telecom realizes is that you need to have the techies on your side, using your technology and getting familiar with your platform. This capitalizes on the availability of social media and makes use of word of mouth not just to promote the event but also to draw people in to the network.
In addition to this the innovation awards are a useful tool to provide students with an introduction into their respective fields especially where very few internships are available for useful practice. The advantage of this is that students are taught a lot more about presentation and group dynamics as they struggle to put together their plans and develop strategies for marketing amongst other things.
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