MTN Business is inviting developers focused on the enterprise app space or IOT market to submit their original tech solutions to compete in this year's MTN Business App of the Year Awards and IOT Conference & Awards.

The company says the awards celebrate talent and out-of-the-box thinking aimed at driving disruption and change.

MTN stated: "The winners of the respective competitions, which will both be held at the Sandton Convention Centre on 24 October 2019 are considered be the Oscars of the ICT industry in Africa. The IOT Conference and Awards will be held during the daytime, and will capped off with the MTN Business App of the Year Awards in the evening."

According to MTN there are several categories in each of the two competitions. After intensive adjudication processes by panels of expert judges, the overall winners will each walk away with the trip of a lifetime to a destination like Silicon Valley, USA, Tech Crunch in Germany or a tech event of their choice internationally to the value of R200 000.

Wanda Matandela, chief enterprise officer of MTN Business, said: "Over the past few years these two platforms have unearthed and profiled ground-breaking, home-grown apps and tech solutions that have become household names and topics of discussion at business events. We believe that by combining the brand appeal of these two development initiatives, we can make a meaningful contribution to the growth of the ICT sector. Additionally, we are reaffirming our commitment to champion the app development movement by promoting game-changing, local solutions that are scalable and commercially viable on the global stage."

Entries in the IOT Conference & Awards will be considered in the following categories:

· The Best Commercial IOT Solution: An existing solution that is already available in the market and has proven to be commercially viable.

· The Most Disruptive IOT Solution: An existing solution that brings rapid disruption or change in its environment, or one which has the potential to revolutionise industries.

· Best Enterprise Development Solution: The best solution developed by an enterprise development beneficiary or developer that has gone through an incubation programme.

· Innovative Hardware in IOT: An IOT hardware solution that originates from an established business or organisation.

· Best Industry 4.0 solution: Industry 4.0 solutions that help to better gather and analyse data and transform it into actionable, real-time, insightful information. This supports the connection of global operations to the enterprise and extended business systems, allowing for better collaboration, faster problem-solving and improved innovation.

MTN Business App of the Year Awards categories include:

• Best Consumer Solution: This application should look at opportunities to make the lives of the everyday consumer easier and more convenient. The solution needs to be customer-centric.

• Best Enterprise Solution: A solution specifically focused on businesses or companies. The application should talk to business challenges, e.g. storage, CRM or the Internet of Things.

• Best Women in STEM: This category recognises the great work being created by women in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) field. This solution should inspire and showcase great skill and achievement in one of these fields.

• Best Incubated Solution: A solution created and built by an individual or team that is currently being developed by an accelerator or incubator hub.

MTN added that submissions for both competitions close 25 September, paving the way for the shortlisting process. Each competition has a separate judging panel of leading tech experts.

According to Statista, the app development industry is projected to exceed US$189-billion by 2020.

"However, despite the mercurial growth of the global app development economy, Africa's share of the number of app developers and app revenue is very negligible according to a report published by Caribou Digital titled: Winners & Losers in the Global App Economy. Despite the exponential growth of the app development industry in Africa, leading countries comprising of South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania, cumulatively contribute less than 5% of developers and generate less than 5% of the global app revenue," MTN stated.