The CIO100 Awards has expanded to cover the whole African continent with a target of over 500 entries for the upcoming tech excellence awards scheduled for November this year.
Previously, the CIO100 Awards covered East Africa but now the tech excellence has extended its mission to cover the rest of Africa including the West, North, and South of Africa.
According to the Chairman of CIO100 Africa Awards, Harry Hare, the expanded scope will allow for a wider spectrum review of more companies consuming and producing tech in various verticals. These verticals cover Manufacturing, Agriculture, Construction, Financial Services, Hospitality, Telecommunications, Mobile, IT Technologies such as A.I, Cybersecurity, Big Data, Cloud Technology among others.
“CIO100 Awards has been focusing on the East African market for the last 10 years. But we recently rebranded to CIO Africa expanding our mandate across Africa. That means even for the tech excellence awards that it will now cover entire Africa with a focus to West Africa, South Africa, and North Africa not excluding East Africa,” Hare explained.
To be at the top 100, companies will be required to showcase their ability to successfully apply technology in their business processes to achieve a return on investment.
Last year, Jaine Mwai, CIO at Standard Chartered Bank Kenya bagged the CIO of the Year Awards making history as the first-ever woman to win this award in the 12-year history of the Awards.
Mwai beat her peers who were shortlisted from over 300 to the highly acclaimed 100, hence CIO100. Some of the very interesting projects handled complex situations such as telemedicine, the use of chatbots and AI, as well as the digitization of the customer service experience.
At the same time, BIDCO bagged the overall winner award last year. This award recognizes the company that emerges top on both the qualitative and quantitative scores by the panel of judges. Bidco beat a field of more than 300 contenders for this award.
The regional CIO100 Africa Awards celebrate companies from Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania for their innovative use of IT. The awards ceremony is an offshoot of the global CIO100 Awards which have been held for over two decades, during which time the awards have identified and recognized 100 companies that demonstrate excellence and achievement in IT across the globe:
The top CIO100 companies will be announced during the annual CIO100 Awards Africa Symposium and Awards, a 2-day high energy celebration of IT excellence that will take place on November 17th -19th, 2021.
Other 2020 winners include the following.
- Banking Sector Award: Standard Chartered Bank, Kenya
- Public Sector Award: Ministry of Public Service, Uganda
- Manufacturing Sector Award: KETEPA
- Transport and Logistics Award: Azampay Tanzania
- Infrastructure Award: Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen)
- Green Edge Award: British American Tobacco Kenya (BAT)
- Special Recognition Award/Business Transformation Award: ABSA Bank Kenya
- Special Recognition Award/ HerNovation: Faith Muricho, Senior Technical Support Specialist, ABSA Bank, Kenya
- Overall Company of the Year Award: Bidco Africa