Kenyan developer wins Vodafone mobile app competition

A Kenyan IT programmer on Wednesday evening won the top prize in a mobile applications development challenge organised by Vodafone and Safaricom.

Bernard Mukangu beat 2,200 applicants from Africa, Asia and Europe with his Automs.gs application that allows for automatic sending of text messages to schedule meetings and raises an alert on the set gathering.

He won Sh1 million and his application will be loaded onto Vodafone’s app store where third parties can download it for a fee that will be shared between the UK telecom giant and the IT programmer.

Vodafone Group Plc, which owns a 40 per cent stake in Safaricom, is among global telecommunication firms and handset manufacturers that are racing to capture local mobile software developers to drive up data usage and increase sales.

“We came up with the Appstar Challenge because we wanted to create a platform for the innovators,” said Bernard Pratapa, Vodafone’s Vice President and Head of Business Solutions for Emerging Markets.

Mr Mukangu joins Kenyans Gerald Kibugi and Gilbert Rono who last year scooped the top positions in the inaugural Appstar competition.

The first runners-up slot this year was taken by Kunal Mahajan from India , who has developed a puzzle game called Matchbox. He took home Sh500, 000.

The second runners-up was 21-year-old Lynnette Huundermark from South Africa, who presented Go Metro, an app that offers real time train announcements, timetables and announcement for the Metrorail South Africa. She won Sh338, 647.

The UK mobile firm joins Nokia and Samsung that have adopted the strategy of running app competitions to capture applications that are relevant to emerging markets — the focus of multinationals faced with sluggish sales in the Western markets.

For developers, the scramble for their applications is set to remove the market challenges they face as startups, in what could boost their earnings and catapult them to global prominence.

“The idea to come up with Automs.gs was born when I forgot to send my girlfriend a message to wish her a happy birthday and as a result she was very disappointed with me,” said Mr Mukangu.

“From that day I purposed to develop an application that would ensure that I would never forget important events in the lives of those I care about both at a personal and professional level.”

He started his career at Nairobits incubation hub in South B, where youth from poor informal settlements study mobile apps development for free.

“Truly innovative people are those who try to find a way of addressing current unsolved problems, unmet needs and unresolved inadequacies in the societies they live in,” says Bob Collymore, CEO Safaricom Limited. “They understand that every problem or challenge in the society is in fact an opportunity.”

The 2,200 mobile apps developers created 1,070 applications and only eight of them were selected for the finals that happened in Nairobi.