Mark Kirumira
25 June 2008
Some students of Makerere University Faculty of Computing & IT will compete in the prestigious Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 World Finals in Paris, France from July 3 to 8.
Before qualifying for the global event, 13 students from Makerere University Faculty of Computing and IT (CIT) had participated in the Microsoft Regional Imagine Cup 2008 Competition which was held at the Hilton Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya last month. The Competition attracted 26 projects from nine Universities from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
At the event, Makerere University Faculty of Computing & IT presented four projects. Two out of three winning projects were from CIT including the overall winner.
The winning project was the Native Green Project about Environmental Protection and it was closely followed by University of Dar es Salaam's SMS Banking Project. In third place was again CIT's Land Use and Carbon Emission Regulation System project.
This year, Microsoft called on young programmers, artists and technologists around the world to compete in the Imagine Challenge Cup - the World's Premier Student Technology Competition - in Paris.
This year's theme is 'The Environment'. The students were to "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment."
The Imagine Cup is one way Microsoft is encouraging young people to apply their imagination, their passion and their creativity to technology innovations that can make a difference in the world - today. Now in its sixth year, the Imagine Cup has grown to be a truly global competition focused on finding solutions to real world issues.
"Winning this prestigious award goes along way to demonstrate the Faculty's commitment to becoming a global Faculty and University. As a Faculty, we are committed to excellence in all that we are doing," Prof. Baryamureeba, the faculty dean said.
The students in the Nairobi winning team included; Joseph Kisolo, David Musoke, Ivan Okuri and Wycliffee Sagini. One of the CIT students who participated in the competition was also given internship placement at Microsoft Regional Office in Nairobi over the next 10 weeks.
"This experience will provide an opportunity to our students to test their capability and skills against the rest of the world," saidProf. Baryamureeba. Last year, CIT Students also excelled at a similar completion - The IEEE 'ICT & Engineering Students Exhibition 2007'.
A number of world class innovations were among the 122 entries of which 57 were in ICT, 34 in electronics and 31 in mobile technology - from 18 institutions in Bulgaria, Kenya, Malawi, Sudan and Uganda. Innovations were inspired by the year's theme "ICT in Rural Development".
Many of the innovative projects were communication and automation solutions based on low-cost mobile telecom technology, as well as mobile-to-web applications.
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