Ericsson Looking for Budding Developers for ‘Apps for Africa’ Challenge

Ericsson  in partnership with Sony Ericsson has announced its regional competition for application developers on the Android platform. The competition titled ‘Apps for Africa’ should not be confused with Apps4Africa but it will to run under the aegis of the 2012 Ericsson Application Awards (EAA 2012). The annual competition for application developers worldwide is organized by Ericsson Research.

The EAA 2012 awards will be themed ‘Apps for the Networked Society’ and will run till May 2012. The competition looks to give developers exposure within the telecoms world and a chance to reach out to customers via Ericsson’s distribution channels. They will also have the opportunity to win the latest top of the range Sony Ericsson phones and €15,000 in prize money.

Members of the winning teams in each region will each receive a Sony Ericsson Xperia phone, while teams in second place will receive Business Experience Packs (incl. Sony Ericsson MW600, office pro, McAfee, and a micro USB cable).

The competition is open to students and to small and medium sized enterprises based in the region; it has been split into four sub competitions based on location as follows:

• Southern Africa  for countries – Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Saint Helena, Swaziland, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe
• Eastern Africa for countries – Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Comoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte, Réunion, Rwanda, Seychelles, United Republic of Tanzania and Uganda
• Central Africa; Central Africa – Burkina Faso, Benin, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Côte D’ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Togo
• Western Africa – Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone

Interested developers in Southern Africa are required to register teams of two to four people online before February 01, 2012 and submit either a video of idea or an Android based application that addresses the theme and makes use of at least one Ericsson Labs API (e.g. Mobile Location or Text To Speech) before February 28^th, 2012.

The competition will be rolled-out across Sub Saharan Africa in November.  All application submissions will be automatically entered into the global competition – EAA 2012 – ‘Apps for the Networked Society’, for the chance to win the cash prize.