Egyptian developers swept the list at Facebook Bots for Messenger Challenge for the Middle East and North Africa, winning four of six prizes.
Facebook launched Bots for Messenger last February, a contest to recognize and reward developers who create innovative new bots in either the Middle East and North Africa, or Sub-Saharan Africa region, in three categories Games & Entertainment, Productivity & Utility and Social Good.
Over 1000 submissions across the Middle East and North Africa, Egyptians have been able to reserve 15 out of 30 seats in the final with their well-crafted and creative bots.
Winners
Egypt’s Mastermind Games Bot, which has developed a gaming bot, won the grand prix for Gaming & Entertainment [worth $20,000 and 3 months of Facebook mentorship].
Mastermind Games Bot is a collection of six interactive games to solve codes based on various combinations of logic and memory. Every time a user guesses the correct code, a cave safe will open to obtain a diamond. Users can share games with their friends as they vie for the top scores and unlock achievements.
Egypt’s Mr. Ink, which has developed a book consultant bot, won the grand prix for productivity/utility [worth $20,000 and 3 months of Facebook mentorship].
Mr. Ink is a book consultant bot where users can share a book title or a photo of a book cover, and Mr. Ink will return its description, author, rating, and reviews.
Egypt’s MathHook, which has developed a math solution bot, won the grand prix for Social Good [worth $20,000 and 3 months of Facebook mentorship].
MathHook brings math into everyone’s lives! Users can find solutions to single and sophisticated math problems; learn how to type problems in latex; and search for math courses from the kindergarten to college levels via a database of 3000+ YouTube videos such as numberphile, Khan Academy, etc. MathHook also creates a community for teachers and students to chat 1:1 via whisper or group chat by sending images and videos of math problems to solve.
Egypt’s Adam 9 months, has developed a community of pregnant women through bot, won a Runner Up prize [worth $10,000 and 3 months of Facebook mentorship].
Adam 9 Months aims to build community of pregnant women. The user set her language and current week of pregnancy to get immediate access to week related information, fetal development videos, workouts and many other pregnancy tools. Adam 9 Months encourage social activities between the new mom and her friends by providing tools like “vote for the best baby name” and “hospital bag checklist”. Our community members can communicate through messages in clean environment where each one identity is safe. Adam 9 Months allow users to search for nearby pregnancy care centers, baby stores or maternity services providers.
The other two winners in the Middle East and North Africa are from Jordan and Morocco, with two grand prix.
Jordan’s Eila (Heroes Burgers & Wings), which has developed a food ordering bot, where customers can open up the restaurant’s Facebook page and order food to their homes or for priority pick up simply by chatting with their bot. Already live with five businesses, they offer a bot-as-a-service for conversational commerce. The goal is to grow these bots into a full pack of automated tools to help businesses sell with the help of artificial intelligence. Official Eila Page.
The second is Morocco’s Trivoxx, which has developed a trivia game to test a user’s knowledge on three categories: Sports, Science, and General Culture. In Trivoxx, a user can play against a friend via the Challenge menu.
Congratulations to all the winners and calling on all the developers in the MENA region, you’re our future.
