NAIROBI: Kenyan developers earlier this month bagged top honours in two separate competitions, an occurrence that cemented the country’s strength in the field of software development.
Kenyan applications trounced those from across the region to take top positions in the regional Zambezi Prize competition and Village Capital’s FinTech for Agriculture 2015.
Both competitions drew hundreds of participants from East, Central and Southern Africa, and showcased the best in mobile apps in the financial, agricultural and transport sectors.
Kenya’s Umati Capital received $100,000 (Sh10.1 million) as the overall winner of the Zambezi prize, a competition that had Kenyan apps taking up six of the 11 finalist positions. They included Chamasoft, Pluspeople, Agrilife, M-Changa and F3 Life.
Across town at an awards ceremony being held almost simultaneously at Village Capital’s FinTech for Agriculture, Kenyan apps again dominated the list of finalists.
Although the top prize went to Rwanda and Ghana, five of the 10 finalists were from Kenya, with cloud-based financial management portal Chamasoft again making the cut.
These were the latest in a slew of competitions and conferences that have given Kenyan app developers the opportunity to assert their authority, with industry players calling on the country to capitalise on these solutions to drive economic growth.
“Many financial service providers have been slow to develop appropriate products and services that include marginalised groups,” said Elizabeth Henry, a director at the Legatum Center, which organised the Zambezi Prize.
“Innovative ideas such as these [showcased] have the potential to grow to scale, and more importantly, have a deep, social impact throughout sub-Saharan Africa.”
Kenya’s start-up community — which became popular four years ago with the proliferation of co-working spaces, such as Nailab, GrowthHub and iHub — is now getting support from the country’s highest office.
President Uhuru Kenyatta earlier this year launched Enterprise Kenya, an initiative to anchor Kenyan start-ups through their growth phase to ensure failure rates — which are pegged at around 90 per cent — are brought down.
