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Kenya's Chamasoft Crowned African Innovation Award Winner At Evernote Platform Awards(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Evernote, the company which seeks to help the world remember everything, has announced Kenyan application - Chamasoft - as the winner of the African Innovation Award, as part of the Evernote Platform Awards, which are organized in partnership with the African Technology Foundation. Chamasoft, which allows groups to automate and monitor their financial records, was selected at Evernote Headquarters in Silicon Valley, California, as the most worthy winner of the first ever African Innovation Award, as part of the annual Evernote Platform Awards that celebrate the best apps that connect to Evernote. Chris Traganos, Evernote's Director of Developer Relations commented: "We are excited to show the Evernote community Chamasoft's financial tools for community-based savings. Chamasoft will pitch live on stage during the Evernote Conference, EC4, in San Francisco, and we're looking forward to welcoming them to California. We look forward to working closely with all teams and supporting them as we promote African startups in the Evernote App Center to a worldwide audience." Launched in May, the annual Evernote Platform Awards recognize the best software applications that connect with Evernote from across the world. The best applications will be featured in the Evernote App Center. As a result of the new wave of tech talent from across Africa, for the first time the awards included a specific category, The African Innovation Award, to recognise the top talent in African-app development. Together with the African Technology Foundation, Evernote representatives visited Cape Town, Lagos and Nairobi in July this year, where they hosted a series of Platform Awards events. Start-up companies from across the region were invited to pitch their application to the judging panel. The top three finalists, Chamasoft from Kenya, Prowork from Nigeria, and OurHood from South Africa, were then put to the Evernote judging panel who later crowned Chamasoft the winner. Chamasoft enables groups, popularly referred to in Swahili as 'Chamas', to monitor collection and investment of funds, and track group income and expenditure. Through the cloud based software, chama members are also able to view group accounts on a dashboard such as their group statements, how much they contributed throughout their chama lifetime, penalties contributed and all other financials pertaining to the members and group. Chamasoft is a product of Digital Vision East Africa. Cristina Riesen, GM, Evernote in EMEA, , who will be speaking at DEMO Africa later this month in Lagos, commented: "We were really impressed with the high quality of pitches and applications that we received whilst on our roadshow with the African Technology Foundation in July this year. During our visit to Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, we were encouraged to see first-hand the existing hub of developer and startup talent across the continent. We are excited to work closely with the tech ecosystem in the future, supporting them to develop the best applications that connect with the Evernote API." Stephen Ozoigbo, CEO, African Technology Foundation, commented: "We consider this to be an exciting first step into a long journey with Evernote and we are thrilled to provide access to internationalization for African Startups through the Evernote platform. We are very proud of all the finalists and we certainly look forward to on-boarding more African apps onto the Evernote App Center." Africa is home to over 1 million of Evernote's 100 million users. Close to 75 per cent of Evernote users are based outside of the US and Canada, and one third are based in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Evernote is the workspace that helps individuals and teams write, collect, find and present everything that is important to them in their everyday lives. Founded in 2008, Evernote is six years into its journey to becoming a 100-year startup. The company has 10 offices around the world and 380 employees. Copyright CIO East Africa. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). |