TNM hands over K8.7mil phones to Smart Challenge participants
Premier mobile service provider Telekom Networks Malawi (TNM), on Friday handed over 25 Samsung Galaxy S5 smart phones to participants of the TNM Smart Challenge Competition.
Handing over the smart phones, which carry a market value of K350,000 each TNM’s Head of Innovations Frank Magombo said the gesture was a fulfilment of the promise by TNM Chief Executive Officer Douglas Stevenson to give the Galaxy S5 handsets as consolation prizes.
“We thank these app developers for contributing towards this competition and we want to encourage them to continue innovating. ICT holds the future, and that future is in the hands of youth like these,” said Magombo.
In her remarks one of the recipients Chikhulupiliro Chimbalu whose team developed Nong’ona application under Smart Community category thanked TNM for the consolation prizes.
“On behalf of my colleagues across the country who participated in the competition, I would like to thank TNM for the consideration,” said Chimbalu.
Chimbalu described TNM Smart Challenge Competition as the most brilliant initiative as it has encouraged the youth to bring change to the country.
“I would love to see more of the youth take part in season two of TNM Smart Challenge because you don’t know where life takes you, it just doesn’t happen but while you have the chance do it now,” she said.
Launched on October 5, 2015 the TNM Smart Challenge provided students, pupils and their communities a platform to showcase innovation in mobile application development and over 30 entries made it to the final list of voting phase.
The highlight of the competition is yet to be seen as in the coming days three winners from the Smart Student and Smart Kid category will be travelling to USA, Silicon Valley where they will tour Facebook, Google, Apple and Stanford University. The winners of Smart Community category received desk top computers to enable them set up a computer lab.
TNM engaged MHub, Facebook, Google, Opera Software and IBM as technology partners for this initiative.
