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Uncategorized By Jessica Colaco / September 12, 2011

Winners of Appcircus Nairobi

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Kenya’s first ever AppCircus event was held on Saturday, hosted by AkiraChix and the iHub. AppCircus is a global traveling showcase of the most creative and innovative apps. Twelve finalists were given the chance to pitch their mobile applications to the eager audience.

The overall winner was Msema Kweli, a mobile app that helps keep track of Community Development Fund Projects. It uses data made available by the Kenyan government through the Open Data initiative to track spending and progress by constituency. Users can then report and comment on the projects. The jury was impressed by the potential for the app to be used as a powerful citizen tool for transparency and accountability for any community and/or development project.

The first runner up was Hewa,  a cloud-based, mobile music marketing and distribution platform for Kenyan artists and record labels to sell their music online. The jury was impressed by the ease of use of the mobile app and its attempt to tackle the problem of local music distribution in Kenya.

The second runner up was NikoHapa, a customer engagement application for businesses that allows users to “check-in” to business and receive promotions. Judges were impressed by the social aspect of the app that allowed users to share news and check-ins.

The jury making the final decision

The jury was made up of a number of noted professionals in Kenya’s tech community – Dr. Joseph Sevilla of Strathmore University, Annie Njenga of Nokia, Idd Salim of Symbiotic, Alex Anderson of Frontline SMS and Maria Langat of AkiraChix. The judges were very impressed by the quality of the apps presented. They judged the applications based on the problem being solved, financial viability, scalability and user experience.

BlogPost by Maria Langat from AkiraChix

Author : Jessica Colaco

Founding iHub Manager - 2010 - 2011 at iHub, Research Director @iHubResearch, Mobile and Robotics Tech Evangelist @iHub_Robotics, Co-Founder of @WMIAfrica and @AkiraChix, @TED Global Fellow 2009 and Guitarist.