Abed Tambwe, a student in IPRC Kicukiro (Kigali city) who is also a carpenter is another lucky MTN customer to win one of the four cars the company gives away in the 2nd edition of its Sharama promotion.

It required him to send a lot of texts messages to MTN 155 to win. "I couldn't believe it until this key was handed over to me with all the belongings to prove I own this car," Tambwe said shortly after receiving the prize in Muhanga district yesterday.

He pointed out that everyone can be lucky enough to win since sending an SMS doesn't cost a lot of money. "I used to believe such promotions are fixed until I won Frw 100,000 in the first edition, then I believed that I could even bigger," testified Tambwe, who also won Frw 500,000 recently. "All that money I was getting, I used it to send more SMSs as I was trying to test my chances of winning the car, which happened today."

According to Allan Numa, the marketing officer at MTN Rwanda, the winner is determined first by how man SMS he has sent, but most importantly by how lucky he is. "Don't be surprised to see that there are other people who have sent many SMS and earned many marks but have not yet won anything," he said, insisting that the promotion is transparent. "Those viewing it as a corrupted promotion, it's a problem of mindset and we believe that with time people will get to know more about such promotions."

He added that the promotion's transparency was assessed by the Rwanda Utility Regulatory Authority (RURA).

Other winners walked away with various prizes including flat screens TVs or cash prizes of Frw 500,000.