Nigeria’s Prowork Wins Apps4Africa $10, 000 Cash Prize

A three-man Nigeria mobile enterprise class project management team has become joint winners of the 2012 Apps4Africa: Business Challengejointly sponsored by the United States’ Department of State, with the support of the World Bank.

The trio made up of Opeyemi Obembe, Francis Onwumere and Ernest Ojeh, had their software programme prowork adjudged as one of three continent-wide winners by the US State Department in the early hours of Wednesday.

They received a $10, 000 grant to further expand their business ideas and horn their entrepreneurial skills.

 Opeyemi  Obembe, spoke excitingly about their success this morning to a BBC radio breakfast programme and noted that “Prowork is a mobile first enterprise class project management and collaboration solution for businesses.

It’s like Basecamp or Atlassian’s confluence but mobile and easier to use, more powerful, with real time collaboration everywhere, anywhere. Prowork is accessible via mobile, the web, SMS and a robust API to allow developers to extend the functionality.”

Other joint winners of the 2012 Apps4Africaproject are: Titus Mawano, of Uganda with Ffene. “Ffene is a low cost business management platform that enables small and medium businesses to leverage technology to reduce overhead costs incurred due to administrative tasks, freeing up resources that can be redirected to growth initiatives. Currently, Ffene can be used for accounting, customer relationship management, product management and generation of reports.”

The Ghanaian duo of Edem Senyo and Heather Cochran, with their entry SliceBiz made up the third joint winners.

“SliceBiz, is a disruptive crowd-sourcing web and mobile investment platform providing alternative funding for startups. Our mission is to unlock a whole new funding market for startups to access finance by creating the framework that will make it easy and appealing for middle class Africans to invest small amounts of their disposable income into high-growth startups with proven potential to give high return on investment,” said Senyo.

In the final competition held last December, 30 finalists were selected including two other Nigerian teams of innovators -1School/Oneskool and AWPN.

The US State Department in a statement announcing the winners notes that “Appfrica will continue to engage these innovators, providing mentorship, additional exposure and additional funding opportunities.”

It notes that the aim of the competition is to “energise African participants to develop innovative software applications that promote job creation and employment opportunities, address the challenges faced by job-seekers, help connect them with businesses looking for talented employees, or otherwise facilitate and promote economic opportunity for youths.”

An independent panel of judges was elected to select continent-wide winners, as well as first and second place winners in each of three sub-regions: West/Central Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa.