This is Africa’s year in Microsoft Imagine cup, as two African countries has scooped awards in this year’s global competition for students’ technologists, developers and entrepreneurs.
Yester night, Microsoft declared the winners of the 11th annual Microsoft Imagine Cup held in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. There were 87 teams of students who represented 71 countries that competed in the worldwide finals this week after winning local and online competitions in their respective countries.
In this year’s competition 12 teams from Africa took part in the finals with just two teams from Uganda and Egypt winning awards.
Uganda’s Team Code 8 from took home a prize in the Women’s Empowerment Award. This award, which was in partnership with UN Women, recognizes two student teams that created projects that best address issues impacting women globally.
Uganda’s Team Code 8 designed a Windows Phone Application called Matibabu, which detects malaria without pricking the body to get a blood sample.
Microsoft agrees that, this app works by connecting a custom piece of hardware (matiscope) to the windows phone. The user is then able to diagnose and know their malaria status in a ‘short’ time period: the results are sent to the user’s skydrive for medical record keeping and sharing with their personal doctors.
The Team MASked Ninjas from Egypt received an AFT Excellence Award. They showed off their Windows 8/Windows phone application called Videolator at the competition.
This app provides users with the most relevant video for an article, a piece of news or any surface that has text when you scan it using your Windows 8 or your Windows Phone device.
Awards at this year’s event have been given away in categories including innovation, games, world citizenship, Microsoft’s cloud service Windows Azure, and Windows phone and app challenges.
The innovation prize was scooped by Team Colinked of UK, games by Team Zeppelin Studio from Austria, World Citizenship by Team for a better world from Portugal, Microsoft’s cloud service Azure by Team Y-Nots from India, and Windows phone challenges by Team ySoft Studio from Singapore, Windows app by Team TeamNameException form Italy among other prizes.