Published: 13 Apr 2017 Source: University Relations Office (URO)
A team from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology has been given an award for emerging winners of the fourth edition of “MTN Apps Challenge”. The awards presentation, held at the Council Chamber, was to honour the students for their outstanding performance as the most innovative digital project developers from the northern part of Ghana.
The winners received a cash prize and a laptop from MTN Ghana. The Departments of Communication Design and Computer Science received ten laptops each for producing the winners.
Mr. John Bukari Basintale, the Northern Sector General Manager, MTN, congratulated the winners for taking up the challenge to test their innovative skills, by thinking out of the box to provide digital solutions to problems they identified in their communities. He stated that digital project development contributes immensely towards the growth of local economies, where developers are needed to create apps, animated videos and Internet of Things (IoT) to support content development and also marketing purposes. Technology, he noted, permeates all aspects of human life. It influences lifestyles and transaction of business thus ensuring a complete transformation of the digital world.
Mr Basintale indicated that MTN will continue to make investments in line with the ongoing technological transformation. He encouraged the app developers to continue to come out with innovative and user-friendly projects that will satisfy the needs of all users. The end of the apps challenge, he said, should not be the end of their efforts. He assured them that the MTN play platform remained open for local content developers, and that MTN will continue to assist them to make their innovations accessible to all users.
Professor Kwasi Obiri-Danso, the Vice-Chancellor of KNUST, expressed gratitude to MTN for their support for technological advancement. He added that the university will continue to support such initiatives. He called on all departments to ensure that the project work of students are channeled towards solving societal needs.
Professor Kwasi Obiri-Danso further expressed gratitude to the students for bringing honour to KNUST. He thanked the lecturers from the Departments of Communication Design and Computer Science for their hard work in producing good students. He indicated that plans are in place to create a mobile app for Tek TV, an educational broadcast facility of KNUST, to ensure that knowledge dissemination reaches out to people in remote areas who lack access to teachers.
The apps designed by the students were “TELEKART”, a mobile and desktop healthcare app which operates as an extension of a hospital in a convenient and affordable way, and “Our Monument”, an animated video which gives information about the various historic sites in Ghana.
The MTN Apps Challenge is an initiative which was launched by MTN Ghana in 2013 to discover app developers of locally relevant mobile applications and creative projects to grow the app developer community in Africa.