Tough Jungle, a game application developed by Gerald Kibuki won the US$ 12000 Safaricom Appstar Challenge beating over 200 applications that were submitted.
Tough Jungle fought a tough battle to emerge tops in the awards. Speaking at the award event Kenya’s Ministry for Communications and Technology PS Bitange Ndemo said the government has put the right infrastructure in place for local content and apps to thrive under the government’s Vision 2030.
Eureka, an education application developed by Gilbert Rono came second position and won US$6000.
According to Nicholas Mulila, Safaricom’s Executive Business Analyst, “There were over 894 Apps submitted, of which only 215 Apps were qualified under the six categories in the App-Star challenge.”
He added that the Tough Jungle and Eureka will go ahead to SA to participate in the Vodafone Innovation Apps Challenge as regional winners. The will battle it out with developers from Tanzania, Lesotho, South Africa, Egypt and Qatar for US$.
The international finalists will have their fares and accommodation in full by Safaricom while only one member of the category winners will receive sponsorship. The category winners took home US$1200 each and will also benefit from entrepreneurial advice from Safaricom just like the first two.
The Category winners were Nduru app by Thomas Kioko under the Productivity and Utilities category.
Mimba Bora by Marcel Ogweno under the Health category, Gordon Owiti’s M-Shamba under the Agriculture category and Vincent Maraba’s Pesa Tracker from the Financial Inclusion category.
The apps had to either run on Symbian, Java, Android or Blackberry.
