Vodafone Ghana gives away GHS 15,000 as a form of seed funding to support entrepreneurs

Mobile Web Ghana Awards 2011 –‘Community of Mobile Entrepreneurs’, On April30th, Mobile Web Ghana held its first awards ceremony.

The ceremony came after three week of mobile web training for 30 young Ghanaian I T savvy who apply to study mobile entrepreneurship training made up of technology track and Business track. The ten projects started during the February-March training course, and developed during April were presented, and a jury decided which among them would get one of the two prizes generously donated by Vodafone Ghana.

First prize went to project –‘Music Request Service’ by Alfred Anyan, Gerald Abraham and Martin Zonyrah and second project – ‘Mobitix’ by David Agbenyega. Music Request Service is a mobile service designed to provide an easy and cheap means for people to request and share their favourite songs using their mobile phones. Whilst Mobitix is a mobile application that allows mobile users to buy tickets and event organizers to issue tickets, monitor their sale and validate them.

The both took home as their prize ‘Music Request Service’ GHC10, 000 and Mobitix GHC5, 000. The Panel of judge were John Totoe of MobileContent, Nii Quaynor of AFNOG, Mark Davies of BusyInternet and Nana Manu of Vodafone Ghana.

According to Florence Toffa, Project Manager of Mobile Web Ghana ,the prize money will be used to create businesses based on the winning projects, and as the second year of our mobile entrepreneurship project starts, ‘we will be following those projects (including those that didn’t win’ , providing further business mentorship, helping accessing capital and providing media exposure. So expect to hear more about the projects soon, their authors and the resulting businesses she added.

The prizes were sponsored by Vodafone Ghana

Mobile Web Ghana is a community of mobile-technology entrepreneurs, developed as part of the World Wide Web Foundation's Mobile Entrepreneurship in Africa program. It is sponsored by Vodafone.

MWG provide mobile entrepreneurship training for people who want to learn mobile technology or mobile businesses. The first session was held in Accra, from 24 February 2011 to 19 March. Mobile Web Ghana is a community of Ghanaian mobile entrepreneurs, and people interested in the Mobile Web. We provide training in mobile technology and business, to help local talent build applications for local communities. We also provide discussion forums, networking events and links between application developers, mobile network operators and established businesses.

The MWG first training covered creating mobile applications to putting it to market. Mobile entrepreneurs were passionate about leveraging mobile phone technology to develop applications that will bring useful service to local communities and create prosperous businesses.