Orange has announced the launch of its largest international developer challenge to date -- across 12 countries -- aiming to spur and nurture the creation of unique and local services for Africa and the Middle East from the growing entrepreneurial base in these countries.
The Orange AMEA Developer Challenge will offer developers within the targeted markets the opportunity to employ Orange's cutting edge APIs (or application program interfaces) to develop any of a wide variety of possible solutions and services.
This large-scale event is launching to start-ups/developers from Egypt, , Jordan, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Congo, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Cameroon and Botswana. Orange is also inviting submissions from France in this year's challenge given the unique insight French start-ups/developers can bring to the design and development of new services for users in Africa and the Middle East.
This announcement coincides with the release of the operator's SMS APIs in Cameroon, Congo, Guinea, Niger and Senegal, which will allow start-ups rapidly develop new SMS-based services and benefit from a special range of SMS volume discounts and tariffs offered by Orange.
Submissions for the Orange AMEA Developer Challenge 2015 are opened from 3 August till 15 September 2015. Ten start-ups/developers from each country will be selected to compete until the end of October. Orange will make a trio of APIs available (SMS, USSD and Director Operator Billing) on a test platform, and each of the participating 12 countries will identify and reward one winning project, with one global winner receiving a €10,000 prize to be announced in November 2015.
Over 90 developers from four African countries participated in last year's 2014 challenge, resulting in a range of new services being launched including the winning project mLouma, a start-up/developers from Senegal who developed a portal for m-agriculture to connect buyers and sellers.
© Press Release 2015
