The group is inviting developers to "come forward with innovative apps which are inspired by the realities of Africa and the Middle East."
Christian de Faria, the MTN Group chief commercial officer, said that with this competition, the company is reaching out to the broad developer community. MTN also intends to speed up the adoption of data-enabled technologies that feature digital content developed with the African and Middle Eastern user in mind.
"The more user-friendly and relevant the app, the more differentiated it will be, thus increasing the likelihood of its adoption on a wide scale in two vast markets that are hungry for local solutions -- not least of which is digital content with an African and Middle Eastern flair," said de Faria in a statement.
Budding app developers have been invited to upload their apps to .
The apps competition, which began Aug. 5, will run for five months and focus initially on the Android OS. All apps must be built in English and should be relevant for the African and Middle Eastern markets.
De Faria said MTN is developing an app store that will come with sought-after applications that speak to the needs and aspirations of users in the group's 21 markets across the two regions.
He said the group's vision is to have an app store platform whose vast majority of applications is, by and large, created by the developer community. He said the apps competition will serve to strengthen the apps ecosystem as well as provide a much-needed distribution channel to 150 million MTN subscribers for the region's developer.
There will be five monthly winners for the duration of the competition. The first prize for the monthly winners will be a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the second prize will be a Samsung Galaxy S2.
The coveted prize for the overall winner, who will be chosen from the six first-prize monthly winners, will be an all-expenses-paid-for trip to the Mobile World Congress 2012.
MTN may choose to feature the best submitted apps on the MTN App Store, pending the conclusion of a formal agreement with the developer.