Airtel, IBM organise mobile innovation competition for UG students

Airtel Ghana, in collaboration with IBM Ghana, is organising a mobile innovation competition for students of the University of Ghana (UG) aimed at building awareness and educating students on issues relating to mobile technology.

Managing Director of Airtel Ghana, Philip Sowah, in a release on Friday explained that Airtel, in its bid to spread its innovation mantra to young people in schools and to encourage entrepreneurship as a means of curtailing graduate unemployment, decided to collaborate with IBM Ghana which had similar ideas.

“What we seek to do is to collaborate to produce a pilot competition on mobile innovation with 50 students from the University of Ghana, Legon, who will come up with ideas that use IBM Lotus Connections to develop an IT-based solution to an identified problem,” Mr Sowah said.

He added that an “agreed scenario and problem statement” would be presented to the students prior to the event scheduled for Saturday, April 21, 2012.

Through the use of a collaborative tool such as Lotus Greenhouse, Mr Sowah said, the students would be asked to generate innovative ideas on how to monetize the mobile platform to create technological products.

The Head of Corporate Communications and External Affairs at Airtel Ghana, Donald Gwira, said the best 20 ideas would be selected and those students would receive coaching/mentoring to prepare them for the panel evaluation.

Mr Gwira said the ideas would be assessed by a panel of IBM and Airtel judges and the winner of this competition would be flown to Nairobi, Kenya, to participate in the Innovation Discovery – Airtel Africa Workshop.

Runners-up in the competition will receive one year Airtel data subscription with all participants receiving Airtel and IBM paraphernalia.

Mr Gwira added: “What we are doing with IBM Ghana is not a mere marketing drive but a very bold statement that we want to encourage all those IT savvy young people that there is so much more that can be derived from the internet. Airtel’s 3.75G service, with our affordable data bundles, ensures that we can access the internet at an affordable and greater speed.”**