Google East Africa Gadget Competition
Hat tip AfroM
The competition is open to university students in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Burundi.
The deadline for this is March 17th; so if you have some great ideas, you can still submit them for consideration. The categories/types of software gadgets and apps that they are looking for include:
(1) Best Gadget UI
(2) Best Local Content Gadget (Most Locally Useful Gadget)
(3) Best Education Specific Gadget
(4) Best Procrastination Gadget
(5) Most Technically Sophisticated Gadget
(6) Gadget Most Likely to Get International Traffic
(7) Best Social Gadget
What the winners get:
“Six students will be awarded prizes. Five students will receive a $350 USD stipend and 1 student will receive a $600 stipend. All winners will receive a Google t shirt, pen, and notebook valuing $7 USD
Application details available here.
on April 1st, 2008 at 17:53
[...] 1, 2008 by toiyoi So Google is enticed Kenyan students to give them ideas? And at what cost? A stipend of $350! Really, that is pure [...]
on September 8th, 2008 at 3:52
I agree the prizes money is too low and I think those organizers in England expect less production from African students . They just used the funds of the project to come and have good journeys on our campus and they are going to use our gadgets for their advertisement industry . I have been comparing this *competition* to other *West students* Google programs like *Google Summer of code* and there is a very big difference in the program management , payments and other points.
Of course GSOC has many other participating organizations but when you give someone a challenge to develop(invent) something from scratch , you must at least back-up him/her with something strong and I think Google may know that ( i.e Consider Android Development Challenge Google investment, ADC is just a coding war against iPhone and Windows Mobile ) .
Hope this is the first *test* for African students , and I hope Google will collaborate with the *student gadget developers* when trying to customize them as their advertisement tools .
I like Google for their Open Source initiative but they are becoming internet *WorldLords* like Microsoft used to be in the Windows PC world.
I am a student at Kigali Institute of Science and Technology ( KIST )
Rwanda.