Nokia DoGood Hackathon: MajiRipoti wins in the global contest

SMS based application aimed at improving role of water service providers

Synacor Consortium, a Kenyan company that specializes in designing and developing mobile websites, web applications and consultancy, recently won the 2012 Nokia ‘DoGood’ Hackathon competition for its MajiRipoti application.

The MajiRipoti solution is designed to act as a link between the general public and Water Service Providers. The solution will allow the Kenyan public to report broken water pipes, sewer pipes and illegal manipulation of the water supply, therefore assisting in the conservation of water and preventing pollution through leaking sewerage.

The company bagged the ‘Open Data’ category at the global hackathon; a Nokia initiative co-organized by Parsons, the New School for Design in New York. The competition, which is part of Nokia’s Helsinki World Design Capital initiatives, aims to promote new ideas for mobile application i.e. “Design and Develop for People and Planet”. 

According to Water Services Regulatory Board of Kenya statistics, the reported national annual water production is 346 billion litres while the average unaccounted for water is 49%. At an average tariff of Kshs40, 000 litres, the annual financial loss through unaccounted for water is approximately Kshs6.8 billion.  The amount of water lost is almost half of what the country produces.

Synacor Consortium Marketing Director, Charlene Migwe noted that members of the public currently do not have an effective channel to raise or report such incidents to Water Service Providers. “We have seen the need to develop solutions which cater for current problems affecting the water industry such as damaged sewerage pipes, to prevent further destruction to the environment and precious water resources. According to USAID, 13 million Kenyans lack access to improved water supply and 19 million lack access to improved sanitation. We believe this solution will improve that situation in our country,” she said.

Commenting on Synacor’s achievement, Nokia East Africa General Manager, Bruce Howe, said: “We are incredibly proud of Synacor’s achievement, as they rose to the challenge in developing an application that stood out on the global stage. Only two entries from the African continent made it through to the finals and we are especially proud to have a winner from Kenya. The energy, enthusiasm and innovation that the developers demonstrated was amazing and we encourage more and more developers to take up such challenges. The mobile content market is growing at a rapid pace and with Nokia Lumia smartphones now available locally, we will require such partnerships to build locally relevant content for our market,” he added.

A total of 10 teams participated in the competition. AppCRAFT, from South Africa, was the only other African Company to reach the finals.

The new solution will shortly be available to the Kenyan public as a mobile application with GPS to allow tracking, and as an SMS based solution to mobile phones without GPS. The application is designed to run on the Windows Phone Platform.

To encourage more people to use the MajiRipoti application, the company will also introduce a game that involves giving individuals ranks depending on the number of reports they have issued and the number of solved issues they have confirmed. All the ranks earned will be published on both Facebook and Twitter networks.