Business News of Thursday, 22 January 2015

Source: GNA

Vodafone Ghana’s AppStar winner lifts Global Award

Mr Eyram Akofa Tawiah of the Leti Arts, one of the two winners at the recently held Vodafone Ghana AppStar competition has won the Global award for “Best Established Developer” at the AppStar international competition held in India.

He swept the global award by beating other competitors from Kenya, India, Tanzania and South Africa in the final, with the app, titled “Africa’s Legends”.

For their prize, Mr Tawiah received an all-expense paid trip to the 2015 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as an opportunity to meet and interact with Vodafone Group’s Senior Management team.

Additionally, the Africa’s Legends app will be featured in Vodafone’s retail stores all over the world.

Another African app developer, ‘Guide Rig’ from Kenya won the ‘Start-up first’ award in the international competition.

The primary objective of the AppStar competition is to recognise and reward app developers in the mobile applications industry across the globe and, specifically, in key Vodafone markets.

Mr Julius Owusu-Kyerematen, Director of Strategy and Innovation at Vodafone Ghana, said the feat by the Leti Arts cemented Vodafone Ghana’s place as the leader in innovation and a company that provides a platform for technological empowerment in Ghana’s Telecoms industry.

“We are absolutely thrilled that Leti Arts has been globally recognised as possessing the best developed mobile application at the international competition,” he said.

“We have always maintained that, as a company, we will continuously support unbridled creativity and innovation while consolidating our position as pioneers and leaders in the telecoms sector.”

Mr Tawiah, the Chief Executive Officer of Leti Arts, commended Vodafone Ghana for supporting young Ghanaians to be creative and innovative.

He said the young Ghanaian is also capable of developing apps for mobile and other technological users and called for support for the development of such talents.

Africa’s Legends is a superhero series developed by Leti Arts with a heavy influence of folklore and historic legends from across Africa.

This year’s Vodafone Ghana’s AppStar competition will commence in August, 2015 with the grand finale set to take place in December.

It is generally opened to anyone with the capability to develop a cool app in any of the listed platforms – Blackberry, Android, J2ME, Windows Phone, iOS.