Digital Impact Awards Africa Announce Jury and Research Panel
Kamplala, June 4, 2014: Following the launch of Digital Impact Awards Africa, #DIAA, with the theme Maximizing the Digital Dividend, HiPipo.com and Cyberplc Limited have today released the official Awards Jury and Research Panel members list. The Awards Jury and Research Panel comprise experts with extensive knowledge and experience in ICT roles such as entrepreneurs, innovators, academic, consultants, policy makers and thought-leaders. The Awards Jury and Research Panel members are based in Africa (Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, and South Africa), Asia (India, Philippines), Europe (Belgium, United Kingdom), South America and USA among others. The jurors are:
- Hon. Vincent W. Bagiire: Honorable Member of Uganda Parliament representing Bunya County West. Chairperson of Uganda Parliament Committee on ICT
- Prof. Jacques Tiberghien (Ph.D): Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel Department of Electronics and Informatics,Belgium
- Mr. Peter Kahiigi: Director Information Security NITA Uganda. Responsible for nationwide planning, development, coordination, management, continuous monitoring and assurance of National Information Security
- Miss Maseena Ziegler: Forbes journalist for entrepreneurship and leadership subjects. Book Writer and Entrepreneur. One of the Young Global Leaders (World Economic Forum).
- Mr. Paul Bagyenda: Co-Founder Digital Solutions and Chief Technologist. Involved in major ICT systems deployments in East Africa including for Web, Mobile Applications and Information Systems.
- Mr. Torach Julius: Director E-Government NITA Uganda. A member of several high-level Government of Uganda and Regional ICT Teams
- Mr. Raja Manohar: CEO at Hexolabs , Young Global Leaders Forum Member – World Economic Forum, TED Fellow, Fellow at National Internet Exchange of India
- Dr. Engineer Bainomugisha (Ph.D): Head of Computer Science Department, School of Computing & IT – Makerere University, Uganda
- Dr. Ahmed Ewais (Ph.D): PhD Researcher at the Web & Information Systems Engineering WISE Lab at the Computer Science of the Faculty of Science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
- Mr. Bright Simons: A Ghanaian social innovator, entrepreneur, writer, a researcher and is the President of the mPedigree Network, an organization that is noted for its work against counterfeit medicines
- Mrs. Rina Gee Kupferschmid-Rojas: CEO of ESG Analytics. A member of the Private Equity Working Group of the United Nations. One of the Young Global Leaders (World Economic Forum).
- Miss Marie-Paule Uwase: Ph.D Candidate, ULB, Brussels; Assistant Lecturer National University of Rwanda
- Mr Vinayak Garg: CEO & Founder at ZestMD Inc. New Delhi Area, India
- Mr. Markland Murphy: Research and Outreach Coordinator at College of Agriculture, Science and Education, Kingston Jamaica
- Mr. Björn Puype:Software Developer at Ypto Brussels Area, Belgium
- Mr. Earl Martin Valencia: President and co-founder of IdeaSpace Foundation, a nonprofit incubator that aims to promote economic development through technology and entrepreneurship based in Philippines
The DIAA project aims to: discover, promote, encourage and reward innovation and best practices for mobile, web, social, digital finance and cybersecurity applications. The project will hold a conference to enable key stakeholders discuss opportunities and challenges of cybersecurity, e-services, digital financial services, social media, big data, Internet of Things and digital enabled communications. This will be followed by the Digital Impact Awards Africa ceremony and official release of a comprehensive research on Digital Media utilization for Uganda and East Africa. A research paper on the rest of Africa will be released at a later date. The project that is already underway (started on May 26th) will run up to August 2014.
