Econet Wireless and Mahindra Comviva scoop the “IoT Product/Service of the Year” award at the AfricaCom awards.

Last week Techzim wrote about how three of our own companies; Liquid Telecom, ZOL and Econet Wireless had been nominated for the largest technology, telecoms and media event in Africa, AfricaCom’s awards ceremony. Let’s not mind the technicalities of that “our own companies” statement for now and just go with it, after all, it’s a good story ain’t it?

Anyway, of the 3 companies that we stated, Econet Wireless made it!

However since the award was a product/service centric award, it means that it’s not Econet as a company that won but rather its product/service EcoCash, EcoCash diaspora to be precise.Therefore, it follows that it wasn’t only Econet Wireless that was acknowledged for this service but Mahindra Comviva too since the service is a product of their partnership.

The EcoCash dispora service allows allows for Zimbabweans that are overseas to send money to their friends and/or relatives back home. It also gives the receiver 7% of the remitted amount as incentive, and last we checked they were giving the remitted amount in USD  only if the receiver cashes out from an Econet shop.

However, part of the T&Cs of receiving the 7% incentive state that sender has to send the money into the EcoCash wallet of the receiver through any one of the following: Mukuru, Cassava Remit, MoneyGram, Call Home, World Remit, MTN, Afrocoin, Western Union, MTN Zambia and Mama Money.

I do believe the product is worth the award considering how remittance issues have become a problem in Zimbabwe due to forex hoarding forex shortages. But then again, I haven’t followed up to see how the process in practice matches up with the one on paper. Maybe you could share your experience in the comments section if you’ve used the service before.

Nevertheless, here’s the list of the rest of the winners that receive the AfricaCom award last night:

Best Network Improvement – Mauritius Telecom for accelerated FTTH deployment

Delivering Excellence in Customer Experience – MTN and Huawei for their Customer Experience Management (CEM)

Best Network Function Virtualisation solution – Ericsson for the Ericsson HDS (Hyperscale Datacenter System)

Changing Lives Award – UNHCR for the Smart WiFi Kiosk

Most Innovative LTE Service/ Application Deployment – Parallel Wireless for making LTE deployments as easy and as cost-effective as Wi-Fi

Best Innovation in Broadcast – Broadband Convergence – Telkom and Huawei for their Telkom LIT_ Service solution

Most Innovative Service ” The Business of Tomorrow“ – Orange for rural electrification

Outstanding Data Management or Analytics Solution – BWTech International Limited for NetChart

CXO of the Year – Ben Cheik Haidara, CEO, Orange, Bukina Faso.

And of course;

IoT Product / Service of the Year – Mahindra Comviva and Econet Wireless for EcoCash Diaspora