The tenth MTN Business App of the Year Awards has opened entries for aspiring entrepreneurs and digital innovators across the country. This year’s edition comes with the extension of the App Academy to include youth from across Africa to participate in this initiative that forms part of the App of the Year Awards 2021 edition.
Last year, MTN launched the MTN Business App Academy to mentor and upskill aspiring talent for a career in app development in South Africa and this year the App Academy is open to the youth across the continent. The upskilling and nurturing of new talent was done through a six-week online coding programme which fed into a new category for the app awards, specifically for the developers who went through the academy.
This year this initiative widens its doors to invite youth from all over Africa to showcase their talent, to learn, and to grab this opportunity to create innovative apps for our society and their businesses. In 2021, the Campus Cup Challenge has been created to engage students at Universities, FET colleges and other institutions of higher learning and encourage entries into the new Campus Cup category.
As part of the drive to grow an inclusive digital eco-system, the top three apps from the MTN Business App Academy will be assisted to develop their apps into fully-fledged solutions. A go-to-market strategy will then be devised to implement the solutions, with MTN Business assisting them to identify a customer, or customers, that are faced with problems that the market-ready solutions can solve.
The coveted prize for the overall MTN Business App of the Year winner (or winning team) is a trip to a tech-related destination to the value of R200,000. The top three ‘Best Campus Cup Solution’ entrants will each receive a share of R100,000. The prize for this category award will be split – R50 000 for the first-place winner, R30,000 for the second-place winner and R20,000 for the third-place winner.
The full App of the Year Awards category list is:
- Best Enterprise App
- Best Consumer App
- Most Innovative App
- Best Gaming App
- Best Financial App
- Best Educational App
- Best Women in STEM
- Best Incubated Solution
- Best Health Solution
- Best Agricultural Solution
- Best Hackathon Solution
- Best South African App
- Best Campus Cup Solution (18 – 26 years of age, from the MTN Business App Academy)
- Huawei Category 15
The six-week App Academy will conclude with a 72-hour virtual hackathon, where participants will use their new knowledge and skills to develop their solution, with a team of tutors on hand to assist. The solutions coming out of the hackathon will be entered into the ‘Best Campus Cup Solution’ category as well as the Best Hackathon Solution and will be part of the overall judging process.
To enter, app developers can submit their entries before 27 July 2021 here. The awards ceremony will be streamed live on 26 August 2021.
