Two African teams have walked away with awards from this year’s Microsoft Imagine Cup, a global competition for student technologists, developers and entrepreneurs.

Last night, Microsoft announced the winners of the 11th annual Microsoft Imagine Cup held in the Russian city of St. Petersburg where 87 student teams from 71 countries have competed in the worldwide finals this week after winning local and online competitions in their respective countries.

And this year 12 teams from Africa took part in the finals with just two teams from Uganda and Egypt winning awards.

Team Code 8 from Uganda walked away with the first place in the Women’s Empowerment Award – an award which, in partnership with UN Women, recognises two student teams that created projects that best address issues impacting women globally. And Team MASked Ninjas from Egypt received an AFT Excellence Award.

Uganda’s Team Code 8 have developed a Windows Phone Application called Matibabu, which diagnoses malaria without pricking the body to get a blood sample.

According to Microsoft, this app works by connecting a custom piece of hardware (matiscope) to the windows phone. The user is then able to diagnose and know their malaria status in a ‘short’ time period: the results are sent to the user's skydrive for medical record keeping and sharing with their personal doctors.

Meanwhile, team ‘Team MASked Ninjas from Egypt’ showed off their Windows 8/Windows phone application called Videolator at the competition.

This app provides users with the most relevant video for an article, a piece of news or any surface that has text when you scan it using your Windows 8 or your Windows Phone device.

At the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2012 event held in Sydney, Australia; teams from Egypt, Algeria Uganda won awards for technologies they had developed.

Awards at this year’s event have been given away in categories including innovation, games, world citizenship, Microsoft’s cloud service Windows Azure, and Windows phone and app challenges.