The ICT Authority Announces PDTP Innovation Award Winners

The ICT Authority hosted the virtual graduation ceremony for the Presidential Digital Talent Programme (PDTP) on Wednesday, July 2020.

Among the partners present was Huawei Kenya which sponsored the Innovation Award for this Cohort, for the fourth year running.

This cohort’s overall award was Traffic E-court. Other winners were Crysis Nduku who was chosen from a very competitive shortlist of 3, with Mbae Lloyd Mawira taking the 1^st runner up spot and Automated Token System rounding off the top 3.

This award is given by Huawei Kenya to an individual or group of interns who have developed an idea or prototype that meets a proven need, can have a major impact, is unique, has a viable business model, is feasible, is relevant to the government’s agenda, is well presented, and has a capable team behind it.

Traffic E-court, the winning award, was developed by Annastacia Muisyo. She says that the system uses intelligent speed cameras that capture vehicle speed and feed the information about speeding vehicles to a database that is used to send alerts to the owner’s mobile phone number to pay the fine within a specified period of time or get a court summons.

The Presidential Digital Talent Programme (PDTP) takes ICT graduates through a one-year program including internships in the public sector and private sector, mentorship, and multiple pieces of training that are designed to build their ICT capabilities, support government digitization and prepare them for the ICT industry.

The Innovation Award is an important part of the program. Whilst undertaking their internship in the public sector, the students are challenged to identify opportunities for innovative solutions that will solve some of the challenges in the public sector agency. They are provided with structured support to implement their innovations and submit them for judging by a panel of public and private sector experts. With the feedback from the judges, it is hoped that many of the innovations that don’t win prizes are still implemented to improve service delivery for Kenyan citizens. The top three teams gain support in further developing and implementing their innovation, receiving a stipend and technical support from Huawei Kenya.

During the awards ceremony, Huawei Kenya received the award for the best private sector company supporting the Presidential Digital Talent Programme (PDTP) Innovations at the 4th graduation ceremony, showing their commitment to supporting local innovation.

Apart from supporting the innovation award each year; since the program began, Huawei has been a steadfast supporter, providing over 50 corporate internships, training over 900 students in Routing & Switching, AI, Cloud, and Security, providing mentors and sharing facilities to host PDTP events.

The Chief Guest of the event was the Cabinet Secretary for ICT, Innovation & Youth Affairs, Hon. Joe Mucheru who was represented by the Chief Administrative Secretary, Maureen Mbaka.

In his remarks, the Cabinet Secretary congratulated the graduating Cohort and reminded them that “ICT is now at the center stage of Kenya’s development plans especially as the world adjusts to the effects of the (Covid-19) pandemic”.

Kenya’s ICT Authority CEO Dr. Katherine Getao congratulated the winners whilst handing them the award. She also commended Huawei noting that “Huawei has been a key partner in the DigiTalent program, showing their strong commitment to supporting local ICT talent and local innovation; we appreciate the support from them as well as other private sector partners who are critical to the success of this public-private collaboration that expands the ICT talent pool in the country”.

“Huawei is very committed to supporting local ICT talent in as many ways as we can. The PDTP is a fantastic initiative benefitting the government and the private sector. We are delighted that we can not only provide our world-leading innovative products to the government, such as in the Konza Data Center but also provide support for local innovation wherever possible. We have hundreds of local partners that we work with and we wish these innovators luck as they transform this country.” added Adam Lane the Deputy CEO, Huawei Kenya.

Other winners included Serge Blockmans from  EPI-USE East Africa who won the best Mentors Awards category and Jane Otoko from the  Ministry of Health who won the best supervisor’s  Awards category, among many others.