by Sylvester Addo | Jul 10, 2017 | Events, General, Imagine Cup, Microsoft Africa
Team Morocco will be representing Africa at the 2017 Microsoft Imagine Cup World Finals. The only surviving African team in the world finals. They’ll be looking to make Africa proud by winning the championship with their idea.
The 2017 Imagine Cup World Finals will take place on the 27th of July at the Microsoft campus in Redmond. 54 teams from around the globe will present their innovations for the chance to win the ultimate prize package. It isn’t going to be any easy. These are the best innovations picked from the finals of the various regions across the globe. Team E-Park from Morocco qualified through the Middle East and Africa competition held in Lebanon.
This year marks the 15th year of the competition. With such high stakes, there is also over $ 200,000 in prizes to be won. This is double the prize package from previous years. The winner of the competition will receive $100,000, a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, a $120,000 Azure Grant and a trip to Microsoft Build 2018 developer conference.
It’s a bit disappointing not to see the other qualifiers from Uganda and South Africa make it through to the finals.
Team E-Park presents for Africa at 2017 Microsoft Imagine Cup World Finals
So what is Team E-Park’s idea? It’s a web and mobile-based solution to finding a parking space. Read more about the team and their project here.
You would be able to see the parking space in real time, know which ones are taken, and which ones are free and head straight there. Not only that but you’d also be able to reserve the empty parking space ahead of your arrival. Other features include keeping track of your car in the parking lot, and in app parking service payment.
Microsoft Executive Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise group Scott Guthrie will be the Host of the event. Also, Microsoft’s Windows Insider chief Donar Sarkar will be a coach and will mentor at the championship.
Other teams from the Middle East and Africa region will be presenting for the ultimate prize. That’s teams Green Jam (UAE), Bl!nk (Lebanon), DocStroke (Jordan), Beta (Oman) and WaCoMo(Qatar).
Last year teams from Tunisia did quite well, making it to the last round of the competition but didn’t win the title. Other teams from last year were from Nigeria and South Africa.
The Imagine Cup Championship will be live via a webcast at 9 a.m. PDT on July 27. We’ll do well to have it available on the page so bookmark this page and come watch it live.
Excited about Africa at 2017 Microsoft Imagine cup world finals? Let’s hear what you think in the comments.
by Sylvester Addo | Jun 15, 2017 | General, Imagine Cup, Microsoft Africa
Two teams from Africa qualified for the 2017 Microsoft Imagine Cup World finals by submitting applications through the online finals.
Teams from Uganda and South Africa have qualified to participate in this years Microsoft Imagine Cup world finals. Team LabTECH Innovation from Uganda and BITSplease from South Africa landed 2 out of the 3 possible qualifying spots. With the 3rd spot won by a team from Spain. These teams will join the other qualifiers from the Middle East and Africa competition held in Lebanon.
There are two ways to qualify for the Microsoft Imagine Cup World Finals held each year. One way is to participate in the national competitions held by the Microsoft or recognized organization in your country. The other is to submit your project online. This option is usually for teams in countries without a Microsoft office or no scheduled competitions.
So this is how the teams from Uganda and South Africa made their qualification. These teams will have to like the others prepare to present their projects at the finals in Seattle July 27th. Any of the participating teams can walk away with over $200,000 in prizes.
About our 2017 Online Finals winners from Africa.
Team LabTECH Innovation from Uganda
Stephen Kalyesubula, Alvin Leonard and Fred Byakuyamba are team members of labTECH. They developed an integrated hardware and a mobile application for diagnosis and monitoring of maternal health.
LabTECH Innovations project is an integrated solution called UriSAF. It’s for effective diagnosis and monitoring of maternal health in low resource settings with their application and Uri scope device.
Check out Team labTech on Facebook and Twitter and read all about their project here.
Team BITSplease from South Africa
BITSplease is a team from the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. The members include Computer Science and Software Engineering students Jihyun Byun and Jacques Oosthuizen. They built a platform that helps users overcome multiple forms of addiction.
Alice is an online environment that helps its users overcome multiple forms of addiction. It allows for portability and easy communication between users and their counselors. So, no matter where in the world our users are, they can always receive the help they require.
Check out Team BITSplease and read all about project Alice here.
We wish all the teams representing Africa the best and hope they make it to the finals of the Imagine Cup 2017 competition and win. Teams E-Park (Morocco), BITSplease (South Africa) and labTECH Innovation (Uganda) have qualified for the world finals in Seattle to represent Africa.
