AfricaCom Awards 2016 winners list

The winners of this year's AfricaCom Awards were announced yesterday evening at the LookOut in Cape Town. The annual industry awards for the African telecommunications, ICT and media sector celebrate and pay tribute to the industry initiatives that improve connectivity and digital transformation across the continent.

There were over 100 entries with 13 overall winners.

Adam Thompson from KNect365 TMT said: “This year’s awards saw an exceptional shortlist of entries. The judging panel were thoroughly impressed with the quality of entries and the range of industry projects carried out. These awards allow us to acknowledge and appreciate the efforts presented by industry players and to motivate others to continually develop game-changing and innovative projects. There were definitely some stand-out winners this year, with Ghanaian projects scooping three awards.”

Initiatives in Ghana over the year proved successful projects with operators Tigo Ghana scooping two awards including the widely coveted Changing Lives Award for their Mobile Birth Registration project. Keeping the Ghanaian presence strong Ebenezer Twum Asante of MTN Ghana scooped the CEO of the year. The judges’ most notable entry came from BRCK with their Kio Kit - Digital Classroom in a Box which won Best Pan-African Initiative.

And we won the 2016 #AfricaCom award for Best Pan-African Initiative for the Kio Kit! pic.twitter.com/PSn8Aly8ls
— BRCK (@brcknet) November 17, 2016

Judging panel

The awards judging panels consisted of: Russell Southwood, chief executive, Balancing Act; Thecla Mbongue, senior analyst, Ovum; Danson Njue, research analyst, Ovum; Tom Jackson, co-founder, Disrupt Africa; Lynette Hundermark, co-founder & chief product officer, Useful & Beautiful; Matthew Reed, principal analyst, MEA, Ovum, Arthur Goldstuck, MD, World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief, Gadget; Scott Bichino, editorial director at Telecoms.com; Bradley Shaw, regional manager - Middle East and Africa at NuRan Wireless and Prakash Patel, chief strategy officer, Fogg Experiential Design Cape Town.

And the winners are...

Category Name	Company nominated	Product name
Best Marketing Campaign	Liquid Telecom	AfriCan
Best App for Africa	Mauritius Telecom	Traffic Watch Mauritius
Best Cost Efficiency Solution for Africa	Orange	Orange MEA Open Tech Hub
Most Significant LTE Development	MTC & Huawei Technologies	Commercial LTE-A Network in Namibia
Best Connectivity Solution for Africa	World Telecom Labs	Vivada for rural wholesale networks
Best Network Improvement	PCCW Global	MEF Certified Ethernet Service
Orange Social Venture Prize	MedTrucks Morocco	Deployment of Mobile Care Units
Best Mobile Financial Service	Mahindra Comviva	Airtel Money “Tap Tap” Tanzania powered by Nearex and Mahindra Comviva’ s mobiquity® Money
Delivering Excellence in Customer Experience	Huawei Technologies	Best User Experience with Huawei CEM
Most Innovative Service " The Business of Tomorrow"	Airtel Africa	Airtel Advanced Call Completion (Adcom)
Best Pan-African Initiative	BRCK	Kio Kit - Digital Classroom in a Box
CEO of the year award	MTN Ghana	Ebenezer Twum Asante
Changing Lives Award	Tigo Ghana	Mobile Birth Registration

Criteria and entry dates for the AfricaCom 2017 season will be announced in early next year 2017.