Nigerian Apps Excels at Global Competition

 AMONG the 451 nominations and the three from Africa, a Nigerian application, FillYaTank, a Business and Commerce solution scale through the tight hurdle of winning.

A statement made available to ICT & BizAfrica

by the World Summit Awards National Expert, Mr. Emmabuel Amos said that there were 40 Winners, selected from 451 nominations adding that WSA Winners 2016 demonstrate the richness and diversity of mobile content globally and proves how mobile innovation can improve society.

According to him, FillYaTank (Business & Commerce), ScholarX (Learning & Education), RedBank (Health & Wellbeing), and Law Pavilion (Government & Citizen Engagement) mobile apps along with Tunisia’s (3 products) and South Africa’s (4 products) were the African countries with products shortlisted into the grand jury final round.

He said that FillYaTank mobile app, which was among the 40 winners of UN-based World Summit Award, showcased the world’s best practices in digital innovation saying that PortHarcourt-based Uchechukwu Anderson Dim is the proudly-Nigerian innovator and producer of FillYaTank mobile app.

The FillYaTank mobile application is available on IOS and Android platforms, and it is a crowdsourcing application, built to assist the user to save money and time buying petroleum products.

Explaining how the application works, the developer, Uchechukwu Anderson Dim said that with FillYaTank mobile application “we can build a community that help each other save money and time on petroleum product by reporting prices and availability.”

He said that the “FillYaTank offers a game of “Spotting” which entail reporting prices and availability of petrol, diesel, kerosene or Gas when you are Buying in a Filling station, Passing a Filling station going about your daily activity or a filling station you live close to and earn points while doing so.”

On the selection process, Amos disclosed that the WSA winners were selected by a Jury of international ICT experts in two democratic rounds where each UN Member State is eligible to nominate one product per category for the World Summit Award.

He explained that any nomination results from a national pre-selection prior to the international WSA Jury and guarantees a fair and democratic process saying that there are eight categories under evaluation in WSA: Business & Commerce, Government & Citizen Engagement, Learning & Education, Environment & Green Energy, Tourism & Culture, Smart Settlements & Urbanization, Health & Well Being, Inclusion and Empowerment.

He said that as part of efforts towards improving and sustaining Nigeria and Africa's size and quality of innovation product participation in future WSA editions, Programos Foundation has initiated two major networks:  a network of WSA Nigeria state-representatives and a continental country-expert platform SmartAfrican Innovation Network in some reality hub tagged BigBrotherICTinnovation.