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MTN Business App of the Year winners crowned

Simnikiwe Mzekandaba
By Simnikiwe Mzekandaba, IT in government editor
Johannesburg, 17 Sept 2021
Ambani Africa crowned overall winner of the MTN Business App of the Year Awards 2021. (Photo via: Twitter)
Ambani Africa crowned overall winner of the MTN Business App of the Year Awards 2021. (Photo via: Twitter)

Ambani Africa, a winner in three award categories, was crowned the overall winner at the MTN Business App of the Year Awards 2021 last night.

It also scooped the awards for the best South African solution, best gaming solution as well as the best educational solution, and walked away with the overall grand prize of R1 million.

Ambani is the creator of two educational apps, one of which is an augmented reality (AR) app that teaches young children African languages. The other is a gaming app.

Both apps, according to founder Mukundi Lambani, teach foundation phase learners African languages. They feature six African language options, covering themes such as animals, parts of the body, numbers and language.

“Whether you’re a young person who wants to learn isiZulu or Swahili, you can easily do that using the apps. The one uses AR, whereby you receive a set of books and can open them in the app, and are able to see certain things come to life and learn languages that way.

“The other is a free gaming app that can be downloaded by anyone, and as one plays the games, they are able to learn an African language.”

The MTN app awards competition, which recognises local app development talent, marked its 10th anniversary and received over 700 app submissions this year.

MTN Business chief enterprise officer Wanda Matandela said: “This is really a year for us to remember. From a MTN Business perspective, we are really proud because our baby is 10 years old.

“I’m so proud of what we’ve been able to achieve in the past 10 years. Ten years down the line, we are talking about 4IR and this app of the year awards is at the heart of the whole industrial revolution.”

The other category winners, which walk away with a cash prize of R50 000, were:

Best Consumer Solution: SA’s biggest online retailer, Takealot.

Best Financial Solution: Former overall winner of the MTN Business App of the Year Awards in 2017, Standard Bank’s Shyft scooped this year’s best financial solution accolade. Shyft allows customers to handle all their forex needs from their phone, with no need to visit the bank.

Best Enterprise Solution: iiDENTIFii, a Cape Town-based technology company that enables remote biometric authentication and automated onboarding.

Best Hackathon Solution: SiSa

Best Health Solution: Guardian Health, whose aim is to make health more accessible, consists of a patient app, paramedic app and management portal.

Best Agricultural Solution: Murimi is an Android-based mobile app that provides information on crop production, crop protection, poultry production, livestock production, and all relevant agriculture-related services.

Best Campus Cup Solution: Developed by students, UniWise is an app that summarises different university prospectuses for its users. All a student needs to do is enter their marks and start searching for any course they would like to apply for at supported institutions.

Best African Solution: Kenyan app, Kazi App helps consumers find trusted businesses and service providers in their vicinity and increases visibility for business owners.

Best Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Solution: Rekindle Learning provides digital learning experiences that empower people to respond to the changing world of work.

People’s Choice Award: Internet service provider Afrihost was crowned the winner of this award category.

Most Innovative Solution: Hellopay SoftPOS enables NFC Android devices to accept contactless card payments. The software allows users to do business on mobile/tablet devices.

Huawei Category 15: Three winners were announced in this category that was introduced last year. It is reserved for apps that were developed for the Huawei App Gallery, are HMS compatible or have integrated an HMS toolkit. In third place was money transfer service Hello Paisa; Matric Live, a multifunctional education app, took second place; and in first place was Road Save.

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