Econet, Liquid Telecom and Nic Rudnick, shortlisted for Africa Com awards

Africa Com has announced this year’s shortlist of the annual awards presented alongside the Africa Com conference in November. This year, companies and an individual in the Econet Wireless International group have been listed in a number of categories. Here’s a listing of the companies and the categories they have been shortlisted in:

• Liquid Telecom
  • “Best Cost Efficiency Solution for Africa” category for the longest fibre links in Africa.
  • “Best Connectivity Solution for Africa” category for the fibre network
  • “Best Marketing Campaign” category for “I Am” campaign. We don’t know about this particular campaign though, so we’re guessing it was targeted at other markets
• Econet Wireless
  • “Best Cost Efficiency Solution for Africa” category. Along with Astellia Revenue Assurance solution.
  • “Rural Telecoms Award” category for the Econet Solar International Home Power Station solution. We should mention this hasn’t been made commercially available yet in Zimbabwe at least. Last we heard they were doing final tests, then silence. Would be good to walk into an Econet shop and just buy one
• Nick Rudnick – The Liquid Telecom CEO
  • “Industry Personality of the Year” category.

The Africa Com awards are generally considered the grammy’s of Africa’s telecoms industry. The presence by Econet entities in the shortlist this year, is the only award related appearance that Zimbabwean companies (or a company with Zim roots) have this year there.

Something notable we noticed though is that Orange, the french mobile operator that has operations in a number of countries on the continent. The things they have been nominated for range from Mobile Money, Social Responsibility, Yellow Pages VAS, Marketing campaigns to fibre infrastructure.

Other interesting nominations we’re seeing include the VUMA Online award that Safaricom has been nominated for. Vuma is the free WiFi in Matatus (Kombis in Zimbabwe) service the operator is running in Kenya.

You can see the full list here.