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Two African teams have won awards at this year’s Microsoft Imagine Cup, the competition that recognises the worlds best student technologists, developers and entrepreneurs

The worldwide finals of the 11th Microsoft Imagine Cup were held in St. Petersburg, Russia and saw 87 student teams, who had won local and online competitions, from 71 countries compete.

This year 12 teams from Africa took part in the finals and two of those teams, from Uganda and Egypt, triumphed.

Uganda's Team Code 8 won the Women’s Empowerment Award, an award jointly supported by UN Women that recognises two student teams for creating projects that best address issues affecting women globally.

The Ugandan team developed Matibabu, an application that diagnoses malaria which diagnoses malaria without the need to prick the skin to get a blood sample.

The app works by connecting a custom piece of hardware, a matiscope, to a Windows phone, according to Microsoft. The user can find out their malaria status in a short amount of time and the results of the test are sent to the user's Skydrive so they can be added to their medical records and shared with their doctors.

Meanwhile Egypt's Team MASked Ninjas received an AFT Excellence Award, for designing Videolator, a Windows 8/Windows phone application.

The app provides users with the most relevant video for an article, a piece of news or any surface that has text on it when scanned using Windows 8 or a Windows Phone device.

Last year's Microsoft Imagine Cup 2012, which was held in Australia, saw teams from Algeria, Egypt, and Uganda win awards.

Award categories cover innovation, games, world citizenship, Microsoft’s cloud service and phone and app challenges.

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Debbie Beech, country manager: SA and SADC at cybersecurity expert, Exclusive Networks Africa. (Image source: Exclusive Networks Africa)

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