Pretoria Mother Wins National Award For Her Pregnancy App

The inaugural Winner of the brand new MTN App of the Year Category 15, has been announced.

“My Pregnancy Journey” scooped the honour, fighting off fierce competition from 16 other shortlisted Apps.

“HUAWEI is proud to have partnered with MTN Business and to introduce Category 15 to the MTN App of the Year Awards,” says Mr. Likun Zhao, Vice President of HUAWEI Consumer Business Group Middle East & Africa (Southern Africa). The award was presented to Jacqueline Rogers from “My Pregnancy Journey” on Thursday, 29 October at the MTN Business App of the Year Awards.

This new category recognises and honours App developers who have integrated their App into the HUAWEI Mobile Services (HMS) ecosystem, using one or more of Huawei’s HMS Core integration kits. These kits aid App developers during the design and development of their Apps, by providing frameworks and tools that bring added functionality and which deliver a great user experience to Huawei device App users.

Many App submissions were received as entries for Category 15. However, only 17 Apps were shortlisted, based on 3 criteria – innovation, social relevance and top game.

As the Winner, “My Pregnancy Journey” was awarded a R50,000 voucher, as well as exposure on HUAWEI AppGallery. The runners-up, “Pracker”, and “Gauntlet” each took home a R15,000 voucher, and will also receive marketing exposure on HUAWEI AppGallery.

The winning App

“My Pregnancy Journey” is an educational pregnancy App that focuses on Africa and the unique challenges that African women face when it comes to pregnancy. Aiming to empower women with everything they need to know about pregnancy health and parenting, “My Pregnancy Journey” has a mountain of resources to make every woman’s unique pregnancy journey a beautiful one.

“Falling pregnant is a significant time in any women’s life. This is not the case for many women in Africa, with one out of four having a fatal pregnancy outcome. An outcome that could have been prevented. There are a couple of things that contribute to this, like socio-economic conditions, poor healthcare services and a lack of information. These are the exact reasons that motivated us to create our educational pregnancy App,” explains Jacqueline Rogers from “My Pregnancy Journey”.

“I did a year of research and realised that there are not many comprehensive tech platforms out there that focus on the unique challenges that our local women and girls face during pregnancy.

The only other pregnancy solutions out there are internationally based pregnancy apps, and they are not focused on Africa or any other third world country in the world,” she says.

Rogers says that this was a huge project which took over two years to complete. “We had to do a lot of research and make sure that our content is correct and that we don’t leave anything out that could potentially save someone’s life. We took all of our own photos, filmed all of our own videos and wrote all of our own content. All of the information was written and filmed by various doctors and specialists in the South African pregnancy industry,” she says. ”We have many features on our app that makes us unique, our app was created by women, for women. We have created the first of its kind from the African continent”.

Huawei is the largest global smartphone brand, with a worldwide user base of over 700 million. Huawei is currently working with more than 1.3 million developers to constantly add to and improve the HUAWEI AppGallery offering for subscribers.

“The Huawei device user community is constantly growing, and it is vital for App developers to ensure their Apps are compatible with the HMS ecosystem and are available on Huawei’s official App hosting and distribution platform, HUAWEI AppGallery,” says Mr. Zhao.

By integrating their App with HMS, App local developers open up the opportunity to reach more device users in Huawei’s massive user base, as well as monetisation opportunities by receiving above industry standard advertising revenue, and access to a diverse range of promotional channels.

“Huawei is dedicated to supporting and empowering App developers, from individuals, to large companies, across the globe, to grow their business, through training sessions, providing technical and marketing support, offering monetisation opportunities, competitions and promotions, and much more. This ties in with one of Huawei’s key priorities, which is ensuring that Huawei device users have access to all of their favourite and handy Apps, as well as top local Apps, through the HUAWEI AppGallery,” adds Mr. Zhao.

Rogers says that to integrate this app onto the Huawei App Gallery was a very easy process.

“I recommend all app developers to put their apps on the new Huawei App Gallery. We also integrated the Huawei Analytics Kit for us to keep updated with our app data. Our next step will be to integrate the Huawei in-app purchase kit. Huawei is opening so many doors for apps and they have over 700 million Huawei users globally so it’s really no brainer for developers to get on board,” Rogers says.

What is next for “My Pregnancy Journey”.

“We have self-funded the project to date and have had to overcome many obstacles to get our project to where it is today. Our next steps are to form partnerships and get funding to help us in the growth of our app. We have big goals and dreams for “My Pregnancy Journey” and we see many other gaps in the market. We want to create something even more innovative; our future plans are to create a whole digital pregnancy ecosystem. Especially now with our global pandemic, technology has become more important than ever in creating resilient healthcare models for the future and beyond. My Pregnancy Journey already fills many gaps in the market, but now we need to get our app to as many pregnant women and girls as possible,” she says.

Advances in technology have drastically changed our world, and 2020 has certainly highlighted the vital role that digital technology plays in helping people to earn a living, pivot and communicate. Driving digital education and innovation across South Africa and empowering tech savvy entrepreneurs with the necessary recognition has never been more important.

The MTN App of the Year Awards Competition, sponsored by MTN Business, plays a vital role in elevating local entrepreneurs and showcasing exciting new innovations within the ICT industry in South Africa, providing a platform that celebrates local talent, rewards out-of-the-box thinking and enables new technology start-ups to build innovative Applications.

If you, as an app developer, have a completed app, which you would like to include on HUAWEI’s vast AppGallery platform, you can visit https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/, or contact the HUAWEI SA Mobile Service team on developersa@huawei.com to find out how HUAWEI can support you.