BLAZE by Safaricom has announced that it will host an esports tournament under its Be Your Own Boss Summit (BYOB Summit) initiative in Mombasa on 31st August.
The esports tournament will be at the BYOB Summit in Mombasa which will be held on 28th – 31st August at the Kenya School of Government. BYOB Summits features youth mentorship sessions and creation camps that are focused on empowering Kenyan youth to achieve success by providing valuable information, skills and networking opportunities in a variety of fields. They include creative arts, fashion, film and photography, music, agriculture, sales and production and sports. Like in previous editions, attendees will interact with mentors who are industry experts through interest-specific pods where they went through workshops and learnt from the mentor’s experience.
The BYOB Summit will culminate in a creation camp where entrepreneurs will have an opportunity to pitch their business ideas, with 24 entrepreneurs, broken down into the top 3 in 8 categories, sharing Ksh. 800,000 in business support. The creation camp will be followed by the Coast regional finals of the BLAZE e-sports tournament on 31st August. Both events will happen at the Kenya School of Government in Mombasa.
The e-sports tournament consist of FIFA 19 and Tekken 7 knockouts running on Play Station 4 and is broken down into 10 grassroots knockouts and 5 regional finals. The tournament targets both casual and avid gamers across the country with a Ksh. 100,000 prize pool up for grabs in each region. Regional winners take home Ksh. 50,000 with the first and second runners up winning Ksh. 30,000 and Ksh. 20,000 respectively.
BLAZE by Safaricom hosted the fifth BLAZE Be Your Own Boss Summit (BYOB Summit) at Pwani University in Kilifi County on 24th August. The summit came shortly after the launch of the BLAZE E-Sports Tournament, which gives opportunity to Kenyan youth aged between 18 and 26 years who would like to take up gaming as a career. Kilifi hosted the first esports tournament with Mark Maranda emerging as the winner. Brian will represent the region during the regional finals to be held in Mombasa.
Like in previous editions, the Kilifi summit saw youth interact with local mentors and industry experts through interest-specific pods and workshops. The Kilifi Edition featured mentors such as Naiboi (musician), Brian Diang’a (pro-gamer), Caleb Karuga (Agripreneur) and Joanna Kinuthia (Digital Content Creator), among others. Besides the mentors, BLAZE has partnered with Google, IBM and Wezesha to provide a mix of content, training and employment opportunities to BLAZE subscribers who attend the summits.
Kilifi County also hosted the fourth edition of the BYOb Summits at the Mariakani Vocational Education and Training Centre on 17th August.