By Adam Wakefield
On Thursday, 9 June, MTN Business hosted a breakfast at the Sunnyside Hotel in Parktown, Johannesburg marking the four week countdown to this year’s App of the Year Awards.
The awards, first held in 2012 and now entering their fifth year, have according to general manager for product services at MTN Business Greg Hatfield “grown in stature over the year and has become the premier app development awards competition in South Africa”.
They will be held at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg on Thursday, 4 August.
Hatfield, addressing attendees at the breakfast, said the Johannesburg breakfast was the first in a series to launch the competition for this year, with the awards not only being about the big prizes and the recognition it brings to developers and businesses.
“It’s about empowering businesses and developers to thrive in a bold new digital world. At MTN Business we fully support these awards as a vehicle which recognises top talent and helps them to create solutions that solve real business needs and address real business challenges in our country,” he said.
This year, an important change to the category structure was taking place, with the focus falling on genre rather than platform.
The judges for this year were Core Group PR and communications lead Tanya Kovarsky, freelance journalist and blogger Nafisa Akabor, Digitata Insights operator engagement director Andrew McHenry, Digitata Limited’s Jonathan Hoehler, MSG Afrika chief investment officer Andile Khumalo and NATIVE VML head of mobile Angus Robinson.
Hatfield said South Africa has talented developers who feel they lack the acknowledgement and support, with their skills constrained and are unable to make the impact they can.
“This has been of significant concern to us and significant concern to the developers who feel sometimes these competitions might give a prize, they might give recognition, they might give some sort of award but they don’t empower them to grow their skills and fully monetise their solutions and maximise their potential,” he said.
“To that end, the MTN Business App of the Year Awards are important and different. What’s important to us is not only to reward the innovative ideas that are set to help change the manner in which business is conducted in South Africa.”
MTN Business, through the awards, not only provide winners with prize money and recognition, but they also offer access to incubator programmes within MTN to enable the developers to launch their apps into the world with the “MTN app badge of approval”.
“The MTN Business App of the Year winner is a medal of honour that has come to identify developers and the fruits of their labour as the best that South Africa has to offer. We believe at MTN that we’ve done pretty well in this,” Hatfield explained.
“As an example, SnapScan, whose smartphone app won the MTN Business App of the Year Awards competition in 2013, has done remarkably well. It’s transformed how we pay for services and goods at numourous shops and vendors and is now in use at more than 20 000 merchants across the country and has a vast network of users.”
Other winners included OneDrop, FNB Banking, M4JAM, Zappa, Vula Mobile and PriceCheck.
“We believe it’s through this kind of success that we shall continue to utilise the App of the Year Awards as a spring board for creative developers and original solutions to thrive,” Hatfield said.
“I wish all participants the best of luck and may the best app developer win.”
Following Hatfield’s address, presentations followed by Intel and Microsoft, before the event wrapped up.