President's son wins Gold medal in Genius Olympiad

A son of President Jakaya Kikwete, Khalfan Kikwete

 A son of President Jakaya Kikwete, Khalfan, has won a Gold medal in the 2015 Genius Olympiad, an international high school project competition about science, art, business and environmental issues held in US recently.

 

Kikwete who partnered with his co-student at Feza International School, Seif Yahya Mhata to develop a virtual business cards and new generation business social media mobile application dubbed “VCARDIN” outpaced other ten projects in ‘Business Category.’   

 

VCARDIN’s purpose is to create a business connection that is sustainable, from the exchange of a virtual business card, Kikwete told reporters in Dar es Salaam over the weekend. 

 

“We hope to build this connection through our next generation social media platform. It also aims at providing a socially generated global network of people who have smart phones and want to use business cards in order to cultivate the most sustainable and effective business relations.”

 

VCARDIN (Virtual Card Index) has two main products for solving the above problems, first is "an application for smart phones" and second is "a social media website" (www.vcardin.com).

 

According to Mhata with the new application, businesspeople will no longer need to use a hardcopy business card. “They will use our free application on their smart phone to send and receive business cards.”

 

He said the service is also environmental friendly, considering that it will reduce the rate of cutting trees to produce paper for business cards. In US alone he said at least 14,000 tonnes of paper are produced for business cards.

 

Metin Er, Feza Schools public relations manager and business studies teacher said his school invested US$30,000 in eight different projects, but four of them qualified to the final.

 

He acknowledged the awards had marketed the country internationally and that they foresee to register about 15 projects next year.

 

Founded and organised by the Terra Science and Education, this year’s competition was hosted by the State University of New York at Oswego. The 2015 Genius Olympiad had 401 out of 1,171 projects from 69 applicant countries.

 

Feza Schools participated in 4 projects and managed to win 1 gold medal and 3 bronze medals out of 1,171 projects from 69 countries.

 

Other projects which won the medals include "The Faults Of Humanity" an art (PHOTOGRAPHY) which was crafted and presented by Prince Mwemezi Muzamil Katunzi a student from Feza Boys High School. Katunzi took a photograph at Kawe (Tanganyika Packers Area) depicting an unlikely event of a forest fire.

 

The other project which won a Bronze Medal was an environmental friendly project that took part in the business category. The project was entitled ''Waste Paper Charcoal Producing Enterprises''. It was presented by Goodluck Komba and Sajjad El-Amin from Feza Boys' High School.

 

The project mainly aimed at reducing the dependency of trees on production of charcoal fuel, thus turning waste papers into useful raw materials for the production of charcoal fuel.

 

The other project titled “Our Environment” that won a Bronze Medal was prepared and presented by Veronica Samuel Ndomba with the purpose of raising human beings awareness on how they can become one of the major source of environment degradation and the proper solutions that will help to save the human race and the future generation.