Innovators challenged to create employment
Information Communication Technology Association of Malawi (Ictam) has challenged innovators to set up their own business enterprises to help the country reduce unemployment figures, especially among the youth.
Ictam President, Wisely Phiri, made the call in Blantyre after an awards ceremony where the Association recognised individuals and companies that have excelled in ICT related innovations.
About 10 individuals were recognised for coming up with innovations that have benefitted various sectors such as agriculture, health, environment, education and manufacturing.
“It must be noted here that our goal with this initiative is to give a platform to the innovators in ICT to interface with the business and the policy makers. We are equally excited to see these innovators start their own start-ups or even get employed if that is what they want but we would like to see more development towards this area. We would like to give platform to these innovators to pitch their ideas and get business as in so doing they can start their companies and employ more people,” he said.
Phiri said the awards were on merit as a panel of judges scrutinised all the submitted projects and came up best entries in all the 14 categories.
“Those who were shortlisted were then called to pitch their ideas to the judges and the audience at the ICT Innovation Conference in Mangochi who had time to appreciate their innovations and asked questions and from their they were able to score them according to their various ideas and the impact each project has towards the development of our communities in different disciplines,” he said.
Phiri said for the corporate categories, the judges looked at the impact of the selected innovations from different corporates for development of country. Those who won were given awards in appreciation of their contributions whereas Sparc Systems who were one of the sponsors of the programme awarded K100,000 to the winner in each category.
