150 East African companies have been shortlisted for the 2019 CIO100 awards. The companies have been shortlisted ahead of the major IT symposium and Awards that will be held in Naivasha from 21 November 2019.
The CIO100 Awards cover six East African countries including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Ethiopia. “This year for the first time, we saw companies from Ethiopia making submissions to be considered for the award,” said Andrew Karanja, Director, CIO East Africa. There has been a steady uptake of technology in Ethiopia as the market continues to open up.
The CIO100 Awards recognizes companies that have used IT in the most innovative way to solve business challenges and achieve organizational goals. The awards have been running for the last none years and have become a yardstick to benchmark a company’s innovativeness among its competitors and industries.
Some of the companies that made submissions from Ethiopia include Gebeya, a technical training company based in Addis Ababa, i-Tech Systems Engineering and Consulting, Meheda Food Processing Company, East Africa Tiger Brands, Development Bank of Ethiopia, Zemen Bank and Dashen Bank SC.
The banking and financial services sector makes up almost 40% of the submissions including from both Commercial Bank of Africa and NIC Bank, now rebranded NCBA after the merger, Equity Bank, DTB Bank, Standbic Uganda, Standard Chartered Bank Kenya, I&M Bank, Sidian Bank and SMB Bank to name just a few.
Insurance and the savings and credit sectors are also very well represented with most of the large insurance companies making submissions. These include UAP Old Mutual, the Madison Group, AAR Insurance, Bluewave Insurance, Mwalimu Sacco, Bandari Sacco, Chai Sacco and Boresha Sacco just as a sample of the submissions.
Manufacturing and hospitality industries had the lowest entries this year with both recording less than 2% of the entries. “Manufacturing and hospitality industries numbers went down this year compared to the last two years where we had a strong field from those two industries,” said Melissa Dorsilla, the CIO100 Project Lead at CIO East Africa.
Government agencies and ministries also made substantive submissions these include Kenya Revenue Authority, Uganda Revenue Authority, Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO), Uganda Investment Authority, National Drug Authority – Uganda, National Hospital Insurance Fund among others.
The adjudication of the awards is on-going and the finalist for the various awards with announced early next week. The adjudication is conducted by a five-person regional jury made up of industry experts from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and South Africa. The jury is led by Prof Louis Fourie, former VC at the Western Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
384 companies had submitted their applications for the 2019 CIO100 Awards.
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