Orange announces winners of 2015 AMEA Developers Challenge FarmConnecta, a Botswana-based start-up,received a prize valued at 10,000 euros |
PARIS, France, December 16, 2015 – Orange (www.Orange.com) presented the “2015 Orange AMEA Developers Challenge” prize to FarmConnecta yesterday evening during the Cairo ICT event. FarmConnecta, a Botswana-based start-up that has developed an information sharing and billing system designed for the agricultural community, received a prize valued at 10,000 euros. The 2015 Orange AMEA Developers Challenge was launched in August in France and 11 other countries in Africa and the Middle East: Botswana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Guinea Conakry, Jordan, Kenya, Mali, Niger and Senegal. The purpose of the challenge is to help stimulate innovation in Africa by offering start-ups the possibility of using Orange’s application programming interfaces (APIs) (https://www.orangepartner.com) to enrich their applications with functionalities that are sometimes essential, such as billing (https://www.orangepartner.com/content/direct-billing-api) or texting (https://www.orangepartner.com/content/direct-billing-api). The call for applications attracted 1,200 innovative projects on www.entrepreneurclub.orange.com. The proposed projects illustrated the potential of telecommunications for regional development in fields as varied as healthcare, agriculture, education and energy. Initially, ten projects per country were chosen for the shortlist. Twelve finalist projects were then chosen by a selection panel composed of experts from Orange and from the Information Technologies and Communications industry. The final ranking was as follows: 1st: FarmConnecta from Botswana has created a mobile marketplace dedicated to livestock trading. Users can access market data and locate lost cattle via a simple mobile telephone. FarmConnecta takes full advantage of the Texting and Billing APIs to revolutionize m-agri applications in Botswana and potentially everywhere in Africa. This Challenge marks the acceleration of Orange’s Open Innovation initiative in Africa and the Middle East by opening up the Group’s technical platforms and providing support for local developer ecosystems through its Orange Partner (https://www.orangepartner.com) program. Orange offers access to the Texting API in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Guinea, Niger and Senegal, and to the USSD and Billing APIs in Egypt. About Orange For more information on the internet and on your mobile: www.orange.com, www.orange-business.com, www.livetv.orange.com or to follow us on Twitter: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Google+ | Tumblr | Reddit | Pinterest | StumbleUpon |