In primary school, we often sang, « The day of the results, the tears will flow ». Today was a day of results for the 2017 Middle East and Africa Bots for Messenger Challenge and instead of tears, it was cries of joys.

The Bots for Messenger challenge is a competition launched by Facebook for developers in Middle East and Africa. The competition was held from February 15 to June 2, 2017 with a decision on May 19 to announce the 60 finalists. For more details, read Conquering Facebook’s Bots for Messenger Challenge (in French).

 

2017 Bots for Messenger Challenge in number is:

• 34 Bots Parties organized in 23 countries to help developers.
• 1000+ bots submissions
• 64 is the number of countries where bot app have been submitted.
• 60 Finalists
• 6 winners & 6 runner up’s

For this day of result, we waited for the white smoke that was to leave the facebook page of Ime Archibong (Facebook’s VP of Platform Partnerships).

After a presentation of the challenge and some statistics, the twelve winners were announced as follows.

 

Middle East and North Africa

 

Trivoxx is a polyglot bot. It is game bot with 3 categories between sport, General knowledge and science. You have 5 questions per round with possibility to keep playing or leave to game.  Link: https://www.facebook.com/trivoxx/

MM Games is a bot with for mission to help you to explore your mind through mastermind games. link: https://www.messenger.com/t/MastermindGamesBot

Mr.Ink Messenger Bot is your fastest choice to get info about books while you are in exploring books in a book stores, libraries or any other place. link: https://www.facebook.com/messages/t/sipofink

Heroes Burgers and Wings is a supernatural restaurant just like its theme. This bot ensures the customer relationship. Link: https://www.messenger.com/t/HeroesBurgersWings

It is a bot on messenger that eases your math solving problems by just chatting with it and it’ll get you all the solutions & with graph. This is very cool!! Link: https://www.facebook.com/mHookBot/

Adam aims to be the perfect companion of pregnant women during pregnancy. Adam does his job by providing tools and guidance throughout the user’s 9-months of pregnancy. Link: https://www.messenger.com/t/Adam9Months

Sub-Saharan Africa

WOBOT (@wobot.mwg) is a gamified bot that entertains you by using very popular vocabulary games. WOBOT is multilingual, it currenlty supports english and french, and will grow in the future. Link: https://www.messenger.com/t/wobot.mwg

Laide is an Artificial Intelligent powered chatbot that connects to different services and brings them to you in a quick and easy interface. Link: https://www.messenger.com/t/laidebot 

Langbot gamifies learning languages and makes sure you’re learning by following up using techniques like spaced repetition. You can also ask for translations or just talk to it in English & French. Link: https://www.messenger.com/t/langbot1

Free wedding planning app. Connect, plan, share your wedding with family & friends. Link: https://www.messenger.com/t/bridelybuzz/

MyTichaa is fun,digital tutor built on Messenger to help students revise for final exams. Verified teachers can submit and curate questions too. Link: https://www.messenger.com/t/mytichaabot

Hyper-cv allows you create beautiful résumés quickly and effectively. It automatically builds you a resume using information from you online profiles. Link: https://www.messenger.com/t/hyper.cv

 

Some notes

Note 1: Mr Ink was a finalist in the Social Good category, but he is a winner in the Productivity category.

Note 2: MathHook was a finalist in the Productivity and Utility category, but is the winner in the Social Good category.

I suppose that in the excitement of the announcement of the results, there was a small mistake that slipped and swapped respectively the winner of the Productivity and Utility category with the winner of the Social Good category. But as we say at home in Cameroon, « As long as everyone is first with the same price, there is no problem. »

Note 3: Adam (9months) is a finalist in the productivity & utility category, but is second in the Social Good category.

Without lying to you, this application had to end up in the Social Good category since the announcement of the finalists, they deserve their victory, this is only my point of view.

Among the 12 winners of the day, we have two applications made by students. They are Laide bot from Nigeria and MathHook from Egypt.

Congratulations to the 12 winners and to everyone who participated in this wonderful adventure.