Senegal’s Handi’Educ has beat other participating African countries, including Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa and is now Africa’s sole representative at the Ericsson Innovation Award’s Semi Final, where it will contest the chance to win KSh. 2.6 million in the finals.
Comprising three engineering students, Handi’Educ is an educative web/mobile app for handicapped children in a learning environment especially kids with vision, speech, hearing and mobility disabilities.
The app converts text to audio for the visually impaired and converts speech by educators to text for learners who may be hearing and speech impaired and is set to be developed for a multi-platform environment to run on all devices.
Fatou Diop, Team Lead, Handi’Educ says: “We are thankful that we made it to the semi-finals of this competition. Our team is committed to helping children from all over the world, irrespective of economic background, gain access to quality education and we appreciate the platform to achieve this”.
Formerly the Ericsson Application Awards, the challenge was launched in 2009 to spark app development and boost innovation. This year, the competition was renamed as the Ericsson Innovation Awards, and the scope was broadened to target university talent globally.
Tumi Sekhukhune, Vice President and Head of Strategy, Marketing and Communications, Ericsson, says: “The Ericsson Innovation Awards creates a platform for inspired undergraduates with a vision of the future to share their insights. This year, several exciting ideas were received on the future of learning from sub-Saharan Africa and around the world. We are proud that one of the ideas that emerged from our region is in the running to showcase their ideas to a global audience.”
With education playing a key part in the move toward Ericsson’s vision of the Networked Society – where everything that can be connected will be connected – the 2015 theme is The Future of Learning.
The competition has been open to students from any academic institution, and in 2015, 270 teams from 43 countries have entered.
The finalists will be announced on March 16. The finalists will then gather at Ericsson’s headquarters in Sweden, where the winners will be revealed on April 15.
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