Chembe Ventures is an Irish owned company which provides seed capital to mobile application developers, social media start-ups and web ventures in East and Southern Africa. We’re sponsoring this competition to encourage innovative mobile solutions to assist residents in urban communities address a specific or general security problem. One prize of US $5,000 will be awarded to the winning entry. On top of that, we’re offering a potential further US $5,000 or more of investment and pilot testing capital to the winning team or individual.

Entry Criteria:

• Entrants must be registered as a developer in the Betavine community.
• Entries need to be written in English.
• Entries must be designed for deployment in an African city.
• This challenge is all about helping residents living in low-income, densely populated urban areas improve their personal security. Entries must provide solutions under one or more of the following headings:

• early warning notifications of criminal activity, violence or other security threats
• assistance for families, communities at risk of crime
• reducing crime, preventing the spread of violence
• location, identification and assistance of victims of violence or crime

How to enter:

After signing in you'll be able to click on the "Create a Solution to this Challenge" button at the bottom of this page and start uploading prototypes or application designs to your Solution page.

Once you are logged in, existing Solutions can also be linked to this challenge.

All entries must include the following documentation:

1. Solution description
2. Sustainability plan
3. Pilot testing plan

See the attachments section for the full brief, which contains more information on what is expected in each document.

Who can enter?

Individuals, informal groups, companies and organisations are free to enter the competition.

Success criteria

The judging panel, made up of representatives from Chembe Ventures and Vodafone, will assess the entries based on the following criteria:

• Value to the potential user – how much safer will it make the average user feel?
• Ease of use and deployment – how easy is it for a non-technical user to understand and benefit from the application? How easy is it to quickly deploy the solution?
• Stability and scalability – how easy is it to add increasing amounts of users to the system?
• Innovation – how does the entry use mobile technology to provide creative solutions to existing problems?
• Sustainability – how viable is the long-term plan for meeting operational costs?
• Viable pilot testing plan – What criteria will the developers use to judge the success of the pilot test?

Prize:
One prize of $5,000 to the winning entry.

Opening and Closing Dates:
Opening: December 20th, 2009
Closing: April 30th, 2010

If you are concerned about protecting your intellectual property rights, then you are strongly advised to seek independent professional advice as to the possibility of safeguarding any potentially inventive element contained within the entry by means of a patent application or other form of intellectual property right, before submission of your entry.

For more information please see the full brief in the attachments section for this Challenge.