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DRC - The K20 project wins first prize in the UPDEV Challenge 2 competition for the best innovative projects in technology
The K20 project won the first jury prize in the final of the competition of the second edition of the UPDEV Challenge for the best innovative projects in technology across the Democratic Republic of Congo.
On Saturday, March 20, during the award ceremony for the winners of this competition, 3 best innovative projects were awarded in Goma, in the province of North Kivu out of the 10 finalists of UPDEV Challenge 2 by the start-up Developers, which is full of developers.
The first prize was published at K20, a mobile and web application developing in the event industry.
According to its initiator, Ézéchiel Kawede, this project aims to promote local tourism by organizing events in certain tourist sites on the national territory in order to attract tourists and maximize income.
“We make events available to one in the region. We noted a lack of an organization working in events and the culture of tourism in DR Congo was abandoned to its sad fate, which is why we have set up this application to help and put in the intelligence of people tourism culture. We make events available, we promote local tourism by organizing events in certain sites in the DRC, we make people pay and that's where we generate money, ” said entrepreneur Ézéchiel Kawede. , winner of this competition with more than 70% of the ratings from the jury.
The second project is to be named “Couveuse vie”, an innovation of Charmante Banzwa, a medical student at the Free University of the Great Lakes Countries.
This is a chargeable device connected to a mobile phone for nursing staff that can alert the newborn when a variation in vital parameters is observed and intervene.
This is in order to limit the high mortality rate of premature children and improve their living conditions during care.
The third-best project was that of Ngoy Mpiana Petronnie, a young entrepreneur living in Lubumbashi who is interested in cybercrime.
According to the organizers of this competition, the objective aims at the entrepreneurial spirit among young people in the sector of New Information and Communication Technologies and to find different innovative ideas, solutions to the problems that plague the country, thanks to mobile applications adapted locally by young people.
Dan Baruka, co-founder of the start-up Uptodate Developpers, at the same time informed that the first winner received as a reward a jackpot of 1,000,000 Congolese francs, the second winner 500,000 and the third 300,000 francs Congolese alongside multiple training and coaching sessions.
“As a start-up that works in new technologies, we have an interest in promoting new technologies in the educational environment and in the lives of young people especially because we understand that by being in new technologies if others really don't know what NICTs are, we tend to believe that in Kivu it's only war, we want to show that in the East there are also good heads, good projects, young people who are capable of achieving great things. We have to promote technology, in order for us to evolve properly with development, we have to promote this,” he said.
This competition, organized under the theme "Investing in technology is investing in human capital", targeted young people of the age which varies between 12 and 30 years old and holders of a technological project in the big cities of the DR Congo.
Among the activities organized by the start-up Les developers à jour include training in schools with technical options to give young people a taste for NTICs, training for students.