Safaricom Limited and Vodafone last week announced the launch of AppStar, aĀ mobile applications developer challenge Ā that will see the top Kenyan developer take home Kshs 1 Million. Ā Appstar is a regional competition which will take place in Kenya, Lesotho, South Africa, Tanzania, Egypt, Ghana and Qatar that will run from September 6, 2012 to November 21, 2012.
The competition will feature entries in six categories: Games/ Entertainment, Health, Education, Agriculture, Financial Inclusion and Productivity. All applications developed during the challenge must run on Android, BlackBerry, Symbian or Java operating systems.
Safaricom will spend over Kshs 2 million on this award scheme and also give the overall winners and runners up the opportunity to compete with finalists from the other six countries for the grand prize from Vodafone in Johannesburg in December.
Applications from the competition will be hosted on the Safaricom and Vodafone apps stores for use by customers within these networks. This will increase exposure of a developersā application across the multiple networks which make up the Vodafone Group. According to Safaricom, theirĀ appstore will be up and running by next month