The competition dubbed, AfricaConnected aims to recognize businesses and individuals in Africa who have had success using the internet.
Google backed competition will accept video submissions from the 20 finalist and will award 5 finalists US$25,000 for their inspiring stories.
The competition is looking for the following categories of winners: originality of concept; level of social/economic impact; relevance to country/region; use of Google products; potential to scale.
Although the giant search engine company says that it is not primarily promoting its Google products, one of the requirements for the participants to get in is to have a Google+ account, underlying a promotional sense to the competition.
“Looking across the web in Africa, we’re already seeing awe-inspiring success stories like those of Just A Band , a music & arts collective from Kenya , or Chike, a businessman and his family from Nigeria, who are the creators of the popular Afrinolly mobile app, which already has over 3 million downloads,” Affiong O, Country Marketing Manager, Google Nigeria announced.
The competition opened today, August 27th and will run until October 31st. The winners in each category will be announced in March 2014.