Kenyan Mobile Developer James Mwai Wins 8.3 Million Shillings in Nokia Contest

Winner James Mwai. Picture by TechWeez

Kenyan developer James Mwai with his App AroundMe has won the In the Know category in the just concluded Create 4 Millions contest that was run by the Nokia Corporation.

AroundMe helps you figure out what services are around you.

AroundMe beat thousands of entries from around the world to emerge as the only contest winner in Africa making James join the ranks of John Waibochi C.E.O Virtual City who won the Nokia 1 Million Dollars challenge just 2 years ago [Read More].

James whom I have the pleasure of knowing {shameless plug ;)} has been developing AroundMe tirelessly for over 2 years. As such he is one of the top developers on the Nokia Symbian platform and his app AroundMe has also been developed for both QT and series 40 which are developer platforms that Nokia has been keen to promote recently.

AroundMe is known to have clocked over 250,000 downloads on the Nokia Store making it one of the most downloaded Kenyan applications.

This is a BIG win for James and for Kenya’s vision of becoming an ICT Hub particularly for Mobile Applications development by the year 2030. We should now expect more Kenyan developers to take more risk in developing applications as the industry begins to emerge as an employer for the Youth. Kudos to James for being such a great example.

You can reach Kenya’s latest Internet millionaire on Twitter @jmwai