Ten million Kenya shillings in prize money will be up for grabs as leading phone manufacturer Nokia announces a developers and innovators competition targeting local content.

The Nokia “Calling All Innovators” competition for local Kenyan content is open to anyone with bold ideas and tremendous talent.  Whether it is someone new to mobile phones or an experienced coder, Nokia is offering new opportunities for local developers to grow their business.  The competition challenges mobile and web application developers to submit entries for content in any category within Ovi Store (Applications and Widgets, Video, Personalization, Games, Audio, Flash & Active idle widgets) with a focus on Internet Innovation, Flash, Mobile Games and Social location. Announcing the competition yesterday, Ms Agatha Gikunda, Nokia Head of Messaging for East and Southern Africa said Nokia’s Calling All Innovators Africa competition has been specifically launched to enable developers to create locally relevant, best-of-breed mobile applications.“This competition, which has been extended to the rest of Africa, is open to both individual and company entries. We are inviting Kenyan developers to submit entries that are of relevance to the African user,” Ms Gikunda said. Ms Gikunda said Nokia had also opened up Ovi Maps for developers as part of the Calling All Innovators competition.  “The designers of the best ideas for applications will be entered into a second stage of the contest where finalists will gain access to the beta environment and the tools to develop their ideas in practice.  “This category of the competition really allows developers to be creative and to use their personal experience from using navigation tools to develop applications that will really add value to the user,” she explained.   Nokia has extended the closing date for the Calling All Innovators Africa competition to the 15th of November 2009, and the winner will be announced on the 10th of December 2009.  Nokia will also accept direct submissions from those developers whose applications cannot currently be uploaded to Ovi Store.All competition entries should be submitted here.