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10 Winners From The AppsAfrica.com Innovation Awards 2017

10 Winners From The AppsAfrica.com Innovation Awards 2017

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The winners of the Appsafrica.com Innovation Awards 2017 were recently crowned, with a number of mobile apps recognized in various categories.

The awards celebrate the best in mobile and tech ventures from across Africa, with mobile apps that impact numerous industries and sectors awarded for their efforts.

The annual awards attracted over 300 submissions from across 31 countries judged by an independent panel of leading industry experts, with the winners announced at the awards party in Cape Town last week.

Here are the 10 winners from the AppsAfrica.com Innovation Awards 2017.

Sources: AppsAfricaIncVentureBurn, ITNewsAfrica, Technext.

Flare is an app for emergency services in Kenya. Photo - Ventures Africa
Flare is an app for emergency services in Kenya. Photo – Ventures Africa

Best Social and Messaging Award – Flare

Flare is a Kenyan platform that has been developed for use by first responders, with both government and private emergency response teams able to use the app to conduct real-time tracking, coordination, resource management and reporting in order to assist them to save as many lives as possible. Described as the Uber for emergencies, Flare won the award as the best social and messaging app.

Snapplify Engage gives students access to all they need to learn digitally. Photo - Twitter
Snapplify Engage gives students access to all they need to learn digitally. Photo – Twitter

Educational Award – Snapplify

Snapplify is an award-winning South African media and technology startup specializing in the retail and distribution of digital content such as eBooks and mobile apps from various publishers to educational institutions and users around Africa.

What3Words provides a way to find locations around the world. Photo - what3words
What3Words provides a way to find locations around the world, even in informal settlements. Photo – what3words

Enterprise Solution Award – What3Words

What3Words is an app that simplifies the process of talking about and finding any precise location on earth, with the entire world divided into a grid of three million by three million squares, assigning each location a unique address that is made up of three simple words, such as ‘times.statute.kindness’.

share acquisition - 160232989 Vodacom billboard in Johannesburg. Photo: Nadine Hutton/Bloomberg/Getty
Vodacom billboard in Johannesburg. Photo: Nadine Hutton/Bloomberg/Getty

Social Impact Award – Vodacom e-School

Vodacom e-School is a an app-based learning tool that allows students across numerous grades to learn about various subjects via the mobile operator’s zero-rated platform, which means that there is no need for the user to have data to access the app.

Flutterwave app aims to unify Africa's payment system. Photo - TechCrunch
Flutterwave app aims to unify Africa’s payment system. Photo – TechCrunch

Fintech Award – Flutterwave

Y Combinator-backed startup Flutterwave is the winner in the fintech category. The Nigerian app provides a modern transaction infrastructure that is designed to allow payments to be made and accepted via mobile.

AppsAfrica Innovation Awards - BoomplayMusic was given the Best African App award. Photo - Twitter
BoomplayMusic was given the Best African App award. Photo – Twitter

Best African App – Boomplay Music

BoomplayMusic is the number one music app in Africa, and it won the Best African App Award at the AppsAfrica.com Innovation Awards. The app allows users to access millions of songs and thousands of music videos while also giving the users the ability to sell their music on the Boomplay platform. There is also updated entertainment news on the app.

What3Words gives a three-word description for any location. Photo: BusinessTech

Disruptive Innovation Award –What3Words

Along with the Enterprise Solution Award, What3Words also won the award for disruptive innovation, allowing the company that provides three-word addresses for any location on earth to emerge from the event with two impressive accolades.

South African fintech company - JUMO software developers in Kenya. Photo - iAfrikan
JUMO software developers in Kenya. Photo – iAfrikan

Changing Africa – JUMO

Winner of the changing Africa award, JUMO, the financial services platform for emerging markets, analyzes user data collected from mobile phones and networks to predict whether a person is able to repay a loan, offering tailored financial products based on that analysis. Since its inception in 2014 the company has disbursed 20 million loans ranging from as little as two dollars up to $50,000.

Mazady is an m-commerce company selling electronics and other items. Photo - Facebook
Mazady is an m-commerce auction company offering electronics and other items. Photo – Facebook

mCommerce – Mazady

Egyptian mobile-based auction service and mCommerce winner, Mazady is the region’s first interactive auction platform of its kind, and has become popular due to consumer products such as electronics often offered at substantially discounted rates. The gamified bidding experience means that users send their bids through and receive live updates throughout the auction duration before the highest bid is announced at the end.

Bounce News. Photo - Google Play
Bounce News learns what content users want to read. Photo – Google Play

News and Entertainment Award – Bounce News

Bounce News is a personal news service that learns what users like to read and recommends articles that suit a user’s content interests, presenting the news in a way that the individual user appreciates, as it is catered specifically to them via the app.