MafutaGo, the application developed by five students from the School of Computing and Informatics Technology (CIT) has won $10,000 (about sh25m) in the recently concluded Pivot East Competition. MafutaGo, is a mobile application that helps motorists locate the nearest petrol station with the cheapest fuel and associated car services like washing bays. It was developed by Christine Ampaire, Samuel Remo, James Muranga, Gerald Odur and Jjingo Wasaka Kisakye.

The Pivot East Competition held in Nairobi, was aimed at giving developers an opportunity to showcase their applications to operators, Venture Capital community, Angel Investors and the ICT Community. Uganda was represented by four applications which included:

• Easy Order: SMS based ordering and supply chain management application that simplifies the way customers order for goods from manufacturers and distributors.
• Story spaces: A digital story telling portal
• mPoultry: Brooder poultry monitoring using a mobile phone.
• MafutaGo: Helps users find the nearest fuel stations with the prices and services that best suit their needs.

Easy Order won in the Business and resource management category while MafutaGo topped the utilities category. At the beginning of this year, MafutaGo was the first runner-up at the Premier Mobile Awards held in Barcelona.

Pivot is an m:lab initiative to bring focus on the Mobile developer and entrepreneur community in East Africa. m:lab East Africa is a consortium of four organizations aiming to be a leader in identifying, nurturing and helping to build sustainable enterprises in the knowledge economy.