The use technology has proven it can tackle the world's toughest problems, according to Clifford de Wit, developer and platform lead at Microsoft SA.
He says the software development industry has been at the forefront of trying to solve real-world problems and is “one of the fast moving technologies around the world; and SA has not been left behind when it comes to this,” he points out.
According to him, SA has shown to be strong in financial services software development and the innovation around financial solutions is continuing to grow. “Mobility and mobile software have also shown impressive improvement not only in SA but across Africa” he adds.
De Wit says for software development, it is important to involve the academia so that they understand the market needs. “Lecturers have to know what the industry is looking for so that they can align their curriculum with the needs of the market.”
In line with this, Microsoft has unveiled initiatives like the Imagine Cup, a competition for tertiary students in IT. For this competition, students submit their projects into the various categories: game design, development and software design. The winners are given the chance to compete at worldwide finals.
The competition gives the student an opportunity to interact with the industry players and get advice, de Wit says. “In the past, we have seen opportunities opening up for the students who entered this competition. They either get sponsorship to develop their concepts or get employed by organisations,” he says.
Crowning the winners
Last night in Pretoria four students from the University of Cape Town - Richard Sadie, Pieter Roodt, Junaid Parker and Mohammed Irfaan Imamdin - won the SA leg of the Imagine Cup.
Their project is a crowd-sourced, collaborative information aggregation, reporting and geo-visualisation system geared towards community-centric disaster management and neighbourhood improvement.
“Looking at the Ushandi model for citizen journalism in conflict areas, we recognised the enormous potential of allowing crowds, communities and neighbourhoods to become self-organising if they had an open, universally accessible, socially integrated, and intelligent platform to share on”, they said.
This team was among 40 teams that took part in this year's competition. As part of the prize, winners will be flown to New York, USA, in June 2011 to participate in the worldwide Imagine Cup competition.
Saving the world
Microsoft says the challenge is in its ninth year, and this year it aims at identifying the world's best student programmers to create applications to solve real-world problems.
The competition aims to give students the chance to gain international exposure and turn their ideas into businesses, the software giant says. “The students will demonstrate how to use technology to tackle the world's toughest problems by aligning their projects to the UN Millennium Development Goals.”
De Wit says: “The creativity and innovation of this year's students gives an indication of how much great talent SA's young minds has to offer. These students are using software to make a real difference in people's lives and to the economy as a whole.”
This technology competition was co-sponsored by BB&D, CSIR, as well as the Department of Science and Technology.
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