After so many months of waiting for a golden opportunity to showcase innovations that are set to rival the great ones like m-Pesa, the pivot east is finally here with us. Thousands of innovative IT minds have toiled months on end preparing and hoping to get the chance to pitch at the Pivot East conference.
Of the thousands who had applied, after months of selections at ihub and mlab, the final 25 were finally agreed on. These 25 got an opportunity to pitch to a mix of investors, venture capitalists, judges, government officials and other delegates at the conference. A great line-up of panel speakers Dr.Bitange Ndemo, PS, Ministry of Information and Communication, Joe Mucheru of Google, Kate Getao, e-Government Secretary, Paul Kukobo from the ICT Board, Bob Collymore of Safaricom, Stella Kilonzo of the Capital Markets Authority among other prominent speakers were there to give a word of advice to these aspiring innovators and expound more on the role of corporates in stimulating innovation.
If you are wondering why this conference seems like such a big deal, to young IT minds hoping to have their ideas heard well, it is worth dying for.
After months of speculation and weeks of anxiety for the competing teams, the top prize for this year’s Pivot East was finaly unveiled. The overall winner is going to receive an all-expense paid, five day trip to showcase at GITEX Technology in Dubai. Gitex is the largest Tech event in the Middle East and East Asia (MEAS) region, it has a strong and vibrant mobile market and a solid ground for investors. The region brings together over 3000 business people, a swarm of blue-chip corporations and one of the biggest displays on innovation and new technology in the whole world.
So what exactly Is Pivot East?
Pivot East is an mlab and iHub initiative to bring focus on the developing world mobile developers and ambitious entrepreneur community in East Africa. mlab is an East Africa consortium of four organizations aiming to be a leader in identifying, nurturing and helping to build sustainable enterprises in the knowledge economy. Its core foundation functions are to educate, train, accredit and certify fresh budding ideas that have a real chance of impacting the region.
iHub is an incubation facility, which caters for the tech community interaction. It is a development space where developers can sit for hours and create IT innovations in a rich supportive environment among their peers. It is also a gateway for developers to know about and participate in events and facilitating access to finance and access to markets for scale up of innovative applications.
The Pivot East 2012 edition of the region’s premier mobile apps / developer competition follows in the steps of the successful one of 2011 under the name Pivot 25. I was very privileged to attend this year’s edition whose theme was Innovation and Enterprise, which culminated in a pitching conference on the 5th and 6th June 2012 at Ole Sereni hotel, in the outskirts of Nairobi. I liked the theme of the conference because it addressed pertinent issues that have for a long time slowed down tech innovations in the country.
Some of the pointers used to build this year’s theme were:
- Opportunities of entrepreneurship in the East Africa Region
- Financing challenges in the regional technological scene
- Role of corporates in stimulating innovation
- Social impact and the Social enterprise
- Role of innovation in driving the regional economy
Why Pivot East?
Pivot East is not only a great opportunity to get exposure for your ideas on a grand stage but it also facilitates demand-driven innovation by regional entrepreneurs, ensuring that breakthrough low-cost, high-value mobile solutions can be developed and grown into sustainable businesses that will address needs of the region. It does this by fostering competition for the ideas among many applications developers and business people to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. Pivot East has established a presence in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Somalia and Southern Sudan, and therefore has facilitated the replication of successful mobile applications, between countries, regions and languages.
Lets just not develop applications to win awards, lets develop them along business models to make money from them
How the winner is selected
The pitching sessions began on the 5th and spilled over to the 6th of June 2012. Each of the five categories had a time period to convince panelists on why they deserve to pitch at the Dubai stage and get the grant money. The top team in each category got a prize and the highest scored team among the category winners was the overall competition winner.
