The CIO100 Awards have announced that this year, 150 out of 384 companies have been shortlisted for the annual IT excellence awards. The award covers six East African countries including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Ethiopia. They will be held in Naivasha from 21 November, 2019.
The CIO100 Awards recognizes companies that have used IT in the most innovative way to solve business challenges and achieve organizational goals. The awards have been running for the last nine years and have become a yardstick to benchmark a company’s innovativeness among its competitors and industries.
The banking and financial services sector makes up almost 40% of the submissions including from both Commercial Bank of Africa and NIC Bank, now rebranded NCBA after the merger, Equity Bank, DTB Bank, Standbic Uganda, Standard Chartered Bank Kenya, I&M Bank, Sidian Bank and SMB Bank to name just a few.
Insurance and the savings and credit sectors are also very well represented with most of the large insurance companies making submissions. These include UAP Old Mutual, the Madison Group, AAR Insurance, Bluewave Insurance, Mwalimu Sacco, Bandari Sacco, Chai Sacco and Boresha Sacco just as a sample of the submissions.
Manufacturing and hospitality industries had the lowest entries this year with both recording less than 2% of the entries.
Government agencies and ministries also made substantive submissions these include Kenya Revenue Authority, Uganda Revenue Authority, Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO), Uganda Investment Authority, National Drug Authority – Uganda, National Hospital Insurance Fund among others.
The adjudication of the awards is on-going and the finalist for the various awards with announced early next week. The adjudication is conducted by a five-person regional jury made up of industry experts from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and South Africa. The jury is led by Prof Louis Fourie, former VC at the Western Cape Peninsula University of Technology.