THE top-placed team in the Developing the Caribbean (DevCa) 2015 Code Sprint Competition has developed an application to help potential entrepreneurs access information and resources critical to their development.

Nicholas Williams and Akua Walters of ‘Team Ambisie/Ambition’ proudly presented their ‘App’ at an awards ceremony at Mona School of Business and Management (MSBM), University of the West Indies (UWI), on March 23.

The competition was held during the DevCa regional technology development conference, March 5-6 at the UWI.

The conference was hosted by DevCa and Caribbean Mobile Innovation Programme (CMIP) — a part of the US$20-million Entrepreneurship Programme for Innovation in the Caribbean (EPIC) funded by the Government of Canada and executed by InfoDev/World Bank.

Team Ambisie/Ambition’s app is designed to help entrepreneurs “find what they need — like office space, workshops, venture capitalists, business incubators”, Walters explained.

He and Williams were also awarded first prize for developing an interactive Caribbean Mobile Innovation Stakeholder Ecosystem Map during the DevCa Conference.

Second-place winner was ‘Team Farmscore’, comprising Ricardo Lovelace and David White; while third place went to ‘Team ItCheap’, made up of Elese Ebanks and Trimaine Buchanan.

Congratulating the winners, Canadian High Commissioner to Jamaica Robert Ready hailed “Jamaica’s future entrepreneurs in the mobile apps sector”.

He said that “the mobile phone industry is an important driver for innovation and competitiveness” and pointed to CMIP as a tool “to strengthen the Caribbean Mobile Innovation Ecosystem through public sector and private sector partners, and in growing a pool of high-growth mobile enterprises that will attract further investment”.

Ready said that CMIP’s Mobile App Startup Training Programme, initiated last June, which prepared youth for DevCa, is being replicated through a collaborative approach among a number of stakeholders with the significant benefit of mobile industry growth in the region.

Robert Whitehorne, CMIP project manager, also had high praise for the Code Sprint Competition winners, whom he said were part of the effort to “create micro and small businesses by harnessing the skills of youth in the Caribbean to build out ideas through to production and implementation”. He said that CMIP intends to establish mobile hubs in six countries.

Dr Maurice McNaughton, director of the Centre for Excellence in IT Innovation, MSBM, said that they planned to make DevCa “more than just an event” and would, going forward, offer expanded training and mentorship “to take ideas beyond to investment and facilitate engagement between and among technology communities regionwide and with data owners”.

An example of this collaboration was explained by Matthew McNaughton of technology development firm Slashroots, who said that they were already working with the Jamaica Agricultural Society “to connect buyers and sellers, and on issues such as how to assess credit risk in lending to farmers”.