Kenyan participants have emerged victorious at the AppStar Challenge which was held in Bangalore, India. The AppStar Challenge is an annual developer challenge that seeks to showcase and recognize the top developers from various emerging markets in international finals.
This year’s finals had participants from Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Ghana and India competing in 2 categories for top awards. The categories for the competition were Upcoming Developer which allows emerging and young developers to compete against others within the same category and Established Developers which pits companies that have been in existence for more than 3 years.
The Kenyan inventions that scooped top recognition are:
Guide Rig (also a runner up in Safaricom Appwiz Challenge) scooped the top award in the Upcoming developer category with the solution that allows mapping of events as well as a rig system that provides instant feedback and information at specific areas within an event/ exhibition through interactive mapping.
My County, an application developed by Shimba Technologies scooped the runner up position and USD 5,000 in the Established developers category. The application gives power to county residents and provides extensive information on county governments including services available, reporting of incidences, rating of the counties and contact information.
This is the 3rd year Kenya has participated and won top awards in the international AppStar contest, with previous winners being automs.gs and Tough Jungle in 2013 and 2012 respectively.
The applications are available on both the Safaricom Appstore and Play Store.
Other participants in the challenge included; Africa’s Legends, a game developed by Ghana’s Leti games which won the top award in the Established developer category, Car Guru, a south African vehicle information application that was runner up in the upcoming developer category and Soko Huru an online marketplace for the Tanzanian Market.
The Grand winner in each category has been selected to showcase their innovation at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month.