Microsoft’s student technology competition - the Imagine Cup 2012 in Sydney, Australia - has seen Egypt and Algeria from the African continent take home trophies in three categories.

The Redmond-based company today announced the winners of the 10th annual Imagine Cup competition, which honours student technology innovations that address the world’s ‘toughest problems’.

More than 350 student software developers from 75 countries have gathered in Sydney this week to compete for funding to help get their software to market. Cash prizes totalling approximately US$175,000 have been awarded across competition categories that include software design, IT systems, Xbox Kinect, a cloud computing Windows Azure contest, a metro style app challenge and a Windows Phone category.

And 11 teams from eight African countries took part in the competition this year, with countries such as South Africa and Ivory Coast being represented.

However, North African nations are set to bring home the spoils for the continent. An Egyptian team, called Vivid, won the Windows Phone category for its app called ‘Health Buzz’, which allows physicians to access a patient’s electronic medical records. An Egyptian also came in second place for the IT Challenge, which was won by Sherif Talaat.

Another African team, called ‘The Klein Team’ from Algeria, won the cloud computing segment that involves using Windows Azure. The Klein Team’s project is called DiaLife, which is a diabetes software management system.

But the winner of the event’s main competition, the software design segment, was a Ukrainian Team called quadSquad, which developed a project that allows deaf people to communicate verbally using custom-designed sensory gloves and a smartphone application to translate sign language gestures into speech.

Games focused on the environment from Thailand team TANG Thai and math education from US team Drexel Dragons won the two Game Design competitions.

“Whether it’s using the cloud to aid in disaster recovery, inventing technology to make education more accessible to erase the digital divide or making it possible to diagnose medical conditions using mobile phones, the Imagine Cup has inspired students to imagine what once was considered impossible and make it real,” said Moorthy Uppaluri, general manager, Global Academic Programs, Microsoft.