China’s AVIC International Holding Corporation has teamed up with Kenya’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to produce the 2nd season of their youth empowerment project, The Africa Tech Challenge.
The first season of the Africa Tech Challenge was in form of a technical challenge that saw the 3 most outstanding participants walk away with full master’s degree scholarships in the most prestigious engineering schools in China as well as cash prizes of $1500, $1200 and $900 for the top three teams.
The most coveted award, a commercial contract worth $100,000 to go into local manufacturing of spare parts, was won by the top two teams from Kabete Technical Training Institute and Nyeri Technical Training Institute.
ATC Season Two is back and bigger than Season 1 and has a focus to encourage more youth to take up and utilize their technical and innovative skills to create employment and something good out of their sills.
Season 2 will feature two competitions the Technical Challenge and the Mobile App Challenge with cash prizes amounting to $10,000 for the Technical Challenge’s top six teams and $8,000 as cash prize for the top three individual winners of the Mobile App Challenge.
ATC has come up with the challenges to empower Kenyan youth by upgrading their technical and Information Technology skills to high professional skills that will enable them to get internships and jobs, as well as decrease the huge unemployment rate facing Kenyans.
ATC also wants to cultivate a spirit of entrepreneurship and facilitate self-employment among the youth. This will be achieved by the intense training that will be provided in both competitions.
In order to push the youth empowerment agenda, cultivate the spirit of entrepreneurship and facilitate self-employment among the Kenyan youth, the ATC encourages participants to enhance their creativity through developing a Mobile Application that meets a specific criteria in this year’s new competition, the Mobile Application Challenge. Target of this Mobile Application Challenge are recent graduates and 4th year students who are taking courses with Information Technology backgrounds.
Once it’s completed, the Mobile Application will be supervised by a panel of experts to determine the three best applications. The top three winners get a chance to walk away with:
- US $5,000 for 1st place
- US $2,000 for 2nd place
- and US $1,000 for 3rd place
The overall winner will also get a six month incubation period with one of the ATC partners, GearBox, where General Electric is also incubating their GE Garages participants.
This year’s Mobile Challenge will be taking place at Kenya Technical Teachers College (KTTC) in Nairobi’s Gigiri area. 50 applicants will be chosen from the authenticity of the ideas they submit and they will start the contest on 27th July at KTTC.
The content will be in the form of training and an elimination hackathon that will last for two weeks, ending August 8th and based on marks awarded for skill, accuracy and precision, cost of production and quantity of raw materials used, 12 finalists will be selected to proceed to Shamberere Technical Training Institute in Kakamega for final training from 10th August to 29th August.
The final competition is due to be held at Shamberere TTI on the 30th and 31st August after which the six (6) winning teams will be awarded with a cash prize and the three most outstanding participants with scholarships to study in the most prestigious Engineering Universities in China.
During the competition, the participants will also have the opportunity to interact with invited business leaders during the ATC Talks. These talks are meant to guide and mentor the participants and will feature different CEO’s, Entrepreneurs, Financial Advisers and Business Leaders.
