Malawi girl develops banking app: Receives award from Mhub Technologies
Malawian student at Lilongwe Technical College, Tamanda Pius, has developed mobile application called Mobi – Bank, which seeks to ease congestion in banks by allowing users to make bank transactions on their mobile phones.
Famous American multinational technology company,Google, and United states based couple through Mhub Technologies, is training young girls and engaging them in application development competition under the supervision of one of the Malawi’s computer wizard Rechel Sibande.
Mhub Technologies gave an award to Pius for the Mobi-bank app.
“I am very happy to be associated with Google.. I have learnt a lot here at Mhub Technologies,” said Pius.
Apart from Pius, awards were given to some girls from colleges around Lilongwe for developing mobile applications that try to solve some of challenges in the community.
Member of Parliament for Dedza East, Juliana Lunguzi, graced the ceremony, at the Malawi’s inaugural technology hub; MHub.
The award giving ceremony followed a two week workshop where the girls were trained on how to develop mobile applications using Google’s MIT Application Inventor platform.
The training culminated into a competition also called a hackathon; where the girls were tasked to come up with ideas and build mobile applications that were pitched to a panel of judges.
Winners were rewarded with an Ipad, Samsung Galaxy Tablets, Flash Disks, Google branded T-shirts and Stickers.
The event was organized by mHub with support from Google and a Malawian US based family of Linda and Lindani Phiri.
Speaking during the function, Lindani who is also a software developer at Red HInc. in North Carolina, USA said he decided to assist the girls as one way of promoting and encouraging more girls to do more in Information Communication and Technology.
Linda is a scientist who has been making a lot of research.
The Phiri’s catered for the prizes for the girls in honour of their mothers.
Lindani Phiri said “I decided to set this competition as one way of honouring my Mamie and the Linda’s Mamie who all passed on, we are intended of making this as annual event,”
Lunguzi commended the girls for thinking of ways to solve challenges communities face.
“The communities we are living in are facing a lot of challenges that need people like you to solve. It is very commendable to see girls using technology to solve some of these challenges,” said Lunguzi.
She went further in encouraging them to work hard and remain focused on what they do so that they can set good examples to the other girls.
Lunguzi further referred the girls to draw inspiration from Rachel Sibande, CEO of mHub who was also the lead facilitator of the training for what she is doing in changing the landscape of technology in Malawi by setting up Malawi’s first technology hub; mHub and leading such initiatives.
mHub is Malawi’s first technology hub and incubator space for young technology enterpreneurs. The hub identifies, nurtures and mentors young technology enthusiasts with technical and business skills. It also provides a co-working space for start ups and facilitates other initiatives such as technical trainings for website developers and game developers.
According to the CEO of mHub, Rachel Sibande, female participation in science and technology is significantly low globally; hence the need to encourage more girls to consider careers in science related courses.
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Playing netball is not innovation,what is wrong with us Malawians. This is why people are rewarded and punished for the wrong reasons as exemplified in the quota system.
@De Morgan Rules – perhaps you should have asked for details on the app instead of assuming this is another recycled idea. The app was chosen out of 23 by a panel of judges that included technical people who have seen a lot of mobile apps.
That aside you are missing the larger point (repeated many times in article) that the main point of the event was to encourage girl participation in IT.
Congratulations Racheal. You are doing great work. Please continue encouraging innovation. In you there is hope for our nation.
Lunguzi ndi dhilu. This innovation is by a girl and thus a girl needs to be there not those noisy gogos. Mxiem
As a UK-based Malawian tech enthusiast, I have to say hats off to the organisers of this event. Congratulations also go out to the winner. I believe that our young girls do need to be motivated to have successful professional careers – whether it’s in tech or another field.
The next step should be to teach the winner how to protect her intellectual property to avoid theft and how to bring the product to market.
Rachel seeking attention too much aaah watikwana
Juliana Lunguzi Kalanda was guest of honour? In her capacity as who?
Bravo! But why did they invite MP for Dedza while sidelining MP for Lilongwe City? Moreover, if this girl developed an app for banking, why didn’t the organizers invite the Banks such as National Bank, NBS Bank etc to showcase the innovation to them and draw their interest? If you don’t create such links this whole exercise is just an academic undertaking with no real application. It would have been better to invite industry gurus than noisy politicians who don’t really contribute much to national development!
Shame !! What is UNIMA and this village university called MUST doing? Still sleeping at this digital age ?
then why were innovator prizes given to netball players and djs? i’m just asking….