Making Africa Work is an international social enterprise dedicated to building the capacity of entrepreneurial young Africans and Canadians to create sustainable wealth and employment through internships, training and collective ingenuity. Its mission is to unlock African’s economic potential by enhancing youth oriented global interaction, exposure and partnerships using modern technology and media. To that effect, MakingAfricaWork is holding an international youth (18 to 30) entrepreneurship contest with a $1500 prize and the deadline to submit applications is approaching soon on December 5 2011. Head over to the website and download and fill the application form by clicking on the Lion’s Lair logo to the left.

For reference, check out this article in the Mobile Message blog series from the National Geographic ‘s FrontlineSMS about how mobile phones are being used throughout the world to improve, enrich, and empower billions of lives. It’s fascinating to see how the mobile application “Sauti ya wakulima” (Voice of the farmers in Swahili) was used by farmers in rural Tanzania:

“A group of five men and five women gather every Monday at Chambezi. There, they use a laptop with a mobile Internet connection to view the images and listen to the sound recordings they uploaded during the week. They also hand out the two available smartphones to other participants, turning the phones into shared broadcasting tools. The smartphones are equipped with GPS modules and an application that makes it easy to upload content. So far the farmers have used them to record geographically localised observations about changes in the climate, and to interview other farmers.”

Farmers were able to learn from each other and sharing knowledge helps them cope with issues such as chaning rain patterns, and scarcity of underground water and new pests and plant diseases.