Last week a competition was organized in Egypt to tackle the growing traffic congestion issue. 
The first-ever Cairo Transport App Challenge (Cairo TApp) wrapped up last Saturday with the first prize awarded to a mobile application that helps drivers with road assistance and car maintenance. Out of the Twenty-three teams competing for the prize, ten were short listed in the World Bank-sponsored competition to develop the best technological solution to one of the many problems associated with navigating Cairo’s notorious congestion.
The Even was hosted The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) together with the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA).
The winning app, , is a “mobile car mechanic” designed to assist car owners. The team won US$3,000 and a nomination to an international mobile application competition at the 2013 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It is the first mobile application for road assistance and car maintenance in Egypt, using GPS location to help drivers locate road assistance centers and sending car maintenance requests with the required service, date, and time to authorized car workshops. The app is also integrated with the General Department for Traffic to provide quick and reliable traffic updates and is available on Android and Blackberry platforms.
Most of the apps were focused on displaying aggregated crowd sourced traffic conditions on a map with quick access to detailed traffic conditions of the city’s main streets. Some others focused on giving directions for shortest routes to car pooling.
A survey conducted by the Arab Advisors Group in 2012 revealed that 52.7% of smartphone users in Egypt use applications. It was revealed that smartphones make up 8.4% of all mobile phone handsets in Egypt.
