MTN Cameroon, leader of the electronics communications sector in Cameroon, is pleased to announce the publication of the results of the Cameroonian edition of the MoMo Developer Hackathon Challenge 2019 competition launched in October 2019. The winning teams were presented to the public on 23 January 2020 during a ceremony at the Akwa Palace Hotel in Douala.

The College Plan project driven by two students from the University of Buea ranked first at the end of the jury’s deliberations. The idea of Takwi Gisele and Fonkam Loïc aims at helping young people to better control their spending by combining their innovative application with an MTN Mobile Money account.

Teledocta, telemedicine project aimed at enabling remote consultations and other medical services, came second, while the LightPay application completes the classification. The LightPay application enables customers to pay for purchases in shops very quickly using MTN Mobile Money. The project also provides for the possibility of asking for help from a friend or family member when you run out of money and also for brands to offer good deals to their customers.

The three projects that stand out were competing in Cameroon against more than 200 others in the first round and eight runners-up on 22 January 2020. The winning trio is rewarded with the sum of 1500 US Dollars for the third, 2000 for the second and 2500 for the first, who will also benefit an all-expenses-paid stay at the Ericsson Innovation Laboratory in Sweden.

During their stay in Sweden, College Plan promoters will participate in the grand finale of the MoMo Developer Hackathon Challenge 2019 against the national winners of the same competition from Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Uganda and Zambia.

“The MoMo Hackathon Developer Challenge was a great experience for all of us. Meeting these young people full of passion and faith in their applications convinced us that they will change the world, that they will be the next digital giants. The impact of such projects for Fintech is huge and I have no doubt that they will have a bold effect on our ecosystem,” said Marie-Rose Daya, President of the Jury, made of experts from MTN Cameroon, Ericsson and ActiveSpace.

The MoMo Developer Hackathon Challenge is a joint initiative by the MTN Group and Ericsson where all developers and entrepreneurs were invited to use their imagination and computer language know-how to propose projects that would use Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to improve the daily lives of MoMo users.

Thus, “all the participants had the daunting task to innovate around the Mobile Money service and take advantage of the initiative to accelerate financial inclusion and the digitization of payments, which many of them did brilliantly.” satisfactorily declared the Chief Marketing Officer of MTN Cameroon, Patrick Attoungbre.