The first annual GeoJozi Developer Challenge has officially found its winners.
The GeoJozi Developer Challenge was launched earlier this year as the City of Joburg urged residents to come up with effective ways of allocating and maintaining addresses of other residents across the 1 644 square kilometres of the municipality.
More than 80 contestants entered their solutions or cellphone applications to be considered for the competition in hopes of making the app a reality.
The exciting competition came to an end on 16 November at the Olive and Plates Restaurant at Wits University where stakeholders, media personnel, project partners and government officials came together to honour the top 10 finalists of the challenge and announce the winner.
“The GeoJozi Challenge is a development challenge that called on the young citizens of Johannesburg to take on our city’s toughest problems through the innovative use of our Geographic Information Systems Data,” said Romeo Mabase, emcee of the awards ceremony.
“We are very excited because we have thriving young people who are up for the challenge and when it became available for them to enter, they came!”
Professor Barry Dwolatzky of the Wits University Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) announced the second runner-up who won R50 000, the first runner-up who won R100 000 and the winner of the challenge who received R150 000.
“While prize money can be used for anything, we hope that the winner will use it to turn their idea into a business, to a future and to jobs for themselves and others,” said Dwolatzky.
Absalom Mpanze was the third place winner, with his app called Blurry-J which locates people in informal settlements and people on outdated or incorrect street names.
Mthembe Dlamini was the second place winner with his solution called FindMe which links a person’s contact information to a current address.
The winner of the competition was Thapelo Lebo Sekwena with his app called Run Jozi, which sources and validates current addresses of individuals.
In the near future, it will be easier for the City to find and validate personal information through the use of these apps.
