Main One Cable Partners Microsoft On Imagine Cup 2013

VENTURES AFRICA – African wholly-owned communications Services Company, Main One, has once again reinstated its commitment to locally developing innovative software, as it partners software giant Microsoft, on Imagine cup 2013 – a premier technology challenge competition for students.

Imagine cup competition allows student innovators all over the world compete to produce various ground-breaking app ideas, create products, set clear business plans and take such products to the marketplace.

While previous editions have been hosted in Spain, Brazil, Japan, India, Korea, France, Egypt, Poland, USA and Australia, this year’s edition will take place in St. Petersburg, Russia from July 8 to 11, 2013.

In Nigeria over 80 students were in attendance for the National finals of the competition held in Lagos last Tuesday, with participants competing for a place in the worldwide finals.

Main One served as the sole bandwidth provider, providing 20 megabytes broadband capacity to the event for live streaming thus emphasizing.

Head of Marketing, Main One Cable, Jumoke Akande, said: “New technologies are rapidly changing businesses, socio-political landscapes and the lives of consumers in Nigeria, Africa as a whole, and other parts of the world, and the speed of adoption is inspiring.”

In total, 12 teams from Nigeria competed during a challenging day of presentations, which brought together students from universities across the country.

Team Life Saver emerged as the winner. Members of the team were from two of Nigeria’s foremost tertiary institutions – Obafemi Awolowo University and Ladoke Akintola University of Technology. They competed in the category of World Citizenship.

Their solution, titled “CardioLife” is designed to tackle heart attack by monitoring heart reading on the fly via the Microsoft Windows Phone. The solution also provides a rehabilitation programme for stroke patients using Kinect sensor.

The team will go on to represent Nigeria at the global finals where the winner stands the chance to win a whopping prize of $300,000.

Team Gravity were winners of the 2012 Microsoft Nigeria Imagine Cup. They created SwiftEr; a software that can improve response time for medical, security, fire and other services during emergency situations.

Developer and Platform Evangelism Lead, Microsoft Nigeria, Shina Oyetosho, stated that: “All Imagine Cup Worldwide Finalist teams are eligible to apply for Imagine Cup Grants, a three year $3million investment by Microsoft to help students turn their ideas into reality. Microsoft BizSpark, another YouthSpark initiative, enables Imagine Cup participants to launch startup businesses in their communities and across the web.”

Meanwhile, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Anglophone West Africa, Yinka Oni, explained that “each participating team that competed in the regional finals is deserving of the highest recognition for the creativity and imagination applied to some of the world’s biggest challenges.”

Since the Imagine cup competition was launched a decade ago, over 1.65 million students across the globe have participated and many of them have gone to create thriving startups companies in their various countries.

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