Safaricom Sponsors @iLabAfrica Mobile Research Project in Kenya
Posted on: August 9, 2011 – Filed under: Global
Safaricom announced a Kshs 20 million grant to a new research centre at Strathmore University dubbed @iLabAfrica in an event attended by the PS in the Ministry of Information and Communication, Dr. Bitange Ndemo among other notables. The grant is the first part of support to set up and run the centre which will conduct research on telecommunications policy and has a business incubation facility.
Thirty five students who demonstrated their applications at the centre have been under the tutelage of instructors from M.I.T (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). This comes after Alex Nyika, a student at Strathmore won the Base of the Pyramid award at the 2010 Mobile Monday Peer Awards that took place in Helsinki, Finland in October 2010 for developing a mobile phone software solution designed to help users of public transport in Kenya to track buses and matatus coming their way.
The goal of the @iLabAfrica initiative is to provide support to similar student driven innovations through provision of capital, business experience and physical resources to enable the students establish successful businesses. Via: Camposanity.