Following last year’s success, today kicks off the 7th annual edition of the Annual Communication Innovation Awards (ACIA) ; that aims to foster greater local involvement in the development and provision of innovative products, services and content in Uganda. ACIA has become a…
Following last year’s success, today kicks off the 7th annual edition of the Annual Communication Innovation Awards (ACIA) ; that aims to foster greater local involvement in the development and provision of innovative products, services and content in Uganda. ACIA has become a signature tune in Uganda’s ICT landscape and communications sector in general
ACIA has been held almost annually to reward outstanding ICT innovations since their inception in October 2010. According to Isaac Kalembe; Senior PRO at the Uganda Communications Commission, the event usually coincides with the World Telecommunications and Information Society Day which is the reason why it’s (ACIA) held in May.
This years ACIA will comprise of three activities; a transport hackathon, followed by an Innovation Clinics, and finally the ICT exhibition, all will be at the Kampala Serena Hotel, from 24th to 26th May, 2017.
1. Hackathon on Smart Transport Management
The hackathon seeks to help and empower innovators with startups that aim at curbing fatalities on roads as well as create a better transport management platform. It will majorly seek for ideas on how to better manage traffic flow; with the increasing number of private cars in Uganda while most of the roads remain narrow and also seeks to explore health and safety assurance of road users including drivers, passengers and pedestrians.
The Hackathon is set to run from 24th to 25th May, 2017.
2. Innovation Clinics
These Innovation clinics under the theme “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, will focus on intellectual property rights, legal services, industry solutions, prototyping and modelling, social aspects of innovation, entrepreneurship, and acceleration and project validation. This will involve presentations from key experts on different topics, and participants will be given an opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas. The clinics will run for 2 days from 25th to 26th May, 2017 with each topical session lasting 90 minutes.
3. Exhibition
The clinic will coincide with an ICT Exhibition, which will be open to the general public offering a platform and exposure to participants to showcase their innovations to diverse audiences. Just to give a peep into the event. For what we know about these exhibitions, there will be exciting innovations on display by our local innovators.
Notably, the Awards gala which will be held on Friday, May 26,2017 at the Kampala Serena Hotel – will be the climax whereby winners and runners-up will be recognized for their outstanding innovations under the categories – Digital Content, ICT for Development (ICT4D) , Service Excellence, 2017 ICT Innovation Start-Up, and Business Excellence and will be awarded with prizes including certificates, trophies, cash prizes, and post-ACIA support including incubation of their ideas and seed funding for certain categories to further development of their innovations.
