Source: African Eye Report
Node Eight, a leading digital innovation company with the mission to build a pipeline of ethical digital talents and investment-ready technology-enabled African startups has won the ultimate prize of the MTN Platforms Accelerator Competition Awards 2023.
The firm beat 22 other competitors across the country to win the ultimate prize.
Node Eight which supported two startups, Wasteman Gh and Aduane Fie Marketplace to participate in the competition received an amount of GH₵50,000, a lifetime partnership with MTN Ayoba, a certificate, and souvenirs from MTN Ghana and Ayoba as its prizes.
The IT and developing firm took home these prizes in the competition’s Tech Hub Award category, while Owna Radio took two category awards namely, Best MoMo Solution, and Best Chenosis Solution.
Also, Wasteman Ghana, a leading waste management startup service with recycling as its priority, won in the Expert’s Choice category.
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These other three winners received GH₵20,000 each, certificates, lifetime partnerships, including an opportunity to put their apps on the Ayoba platform which has over 10 million active customers in Ghana and over 21 million across Africa.
Speaking on behalf of his colleagues, Courage Asase, Managing Director of Node Eight thanked MTN Ayoba for the recognition.
He also used the occasion to dedicate the ultimate prize to his team and the people of Ho and Accra for their support.
In an interview with journalists after the awards event, Chief Digital Officer of MTN Ghana, Dario Bianchi, said the company was empowering the startups to contribute to the socio-economic development of Ghana.
Through the MTN Platforms Accelerator awards, he said they “explained to the startups how to use Chenosis, our Application Programmable Interfaces (APIs), how to use mobile money (MoMo) to collect and receive payments and how to build micro apps to be placed on MTN Ayoba, Africa’s super app”.
According to him, there are over 40 micro apps on the MTN Ayoba platform.
Mr Bianchi while congratulating the award winners further explained that the startups were also trained on how to use the APIs and have two weeks to develop live micro apps on the platform.
This is the third edition. We started with the Ayoba Hackathon 2021. In 2022, we had the MTN Ayoba MoMo Accelerator and we are having today MTN Platforms Accelerator Competition Awards 2023, he said.
He noted that the MTN Ayoba app, which was launched in May 2019, became available to users in Ghana in 2020 and has so far provided exciting content for all users irrespective of their locations in the country.
Besides chatting for free via instant messaging, Ayoba offers access to an in-app music player which brings weekly updates on the latest African and international music.
Users can play a wide variety of free and exciting games ranging from action, adventure and children’s games as well as have access to one of the top global games-Subway Surfers.
It also has channels covering eight categories: news, sports, entertainment, health and fitness, fashion and beauty, education, and music.
Tracing the journey of the competition, the Manager of Digital Platforms of MTN Ghana, Ms Winnie Dzidonu said the digital team of MTN Ghana as part of the competition organised roadshows nationwide.
She explained that the competition is carved for the youth to ensure they drive the future with digital activities.
The competition has been created by MTN Ayoba for all the startup businesses in the various regions and tech developers at tech hubs in the country.
This is because they believe that the youth is the future, and they want to use digital to drive the future, she added.
The main objective of this is to push local businesses to leverage Ayoba as a platform to drive growth for both young businesses and to drive their services and products to customers outside, Ms Dzidonu said.
MTN Ayoba is available on the Google Play store to all MTN and non-MTN customers in the digital ecosystem who wish to enjoy all the service and rich media content Ayoba provides.
All MTN users are allowed to enjoy all these services and more on Ayoba for free- no data is required.
Instructively, MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategy is to drive digital and financial inclusion across Africa, via Ayoba the company.
intends to reach 100 million monthly active users by 2025, ensuring more people reap the social, economic, and developmental dividends of being online.
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Source: African Eye Report
