The African Conservation Foundation has been nominated as a finalist for the Stockholm Challenge Award 2006.

The Challenge jury has selected 151 finalists who have a chance to win in their categories. Finalists from Africa will also compete for the trophy in the WSIS Challenge Award, a side event of the Stockholm Challenge 2006. (Stockholm, April 4, 2006). All finalists are invited to come to Stockholm for the Challenge Final Event, May 8-11 in Kista, north of the Stockholm City centre. They will participate in thematic workshops on the 9th and join in a public conference on the 10th.

The Awards celebrations will take place in the evening of May 11th in the venue of the Nobel Banquet in the Stockholm City Hall. The winners of the Challenge trophies and cash awards of 5.000 Euro will be announced. The winner in the WSIS Challenge Award for the African finalists will receive 10.000 Euro. All finalists are presented on the Challenge web site, http://event.stockholmchallenge.se.

The Challenge programme 2006 has focused on ICT for development in underserved parts of the world. The object has been to find excellent examples of implementations of ICT that show clear benefits to people and their communities, wide impact and sustainable business models. We are happy for the geographical spread of the finalists, which demonstrates that excellence in ICT implementations can be found anywhere in the world, says project manager Ulla Skiden. She adds that the Stockholm Challenge exits to identify, recognise and share that excellence.

Asia has the highest percentage of finalists with 43 projects, followed by Europe with 35. Africa has 30 finalists and North America is represented by 21 teams. South America and Oceania managed to get 11 projects each into the final phase. The Stockholm Challenge invites media and others to meet some of the best ICT projects in the world ? to join the open conference on May 10th and come to the press conference in the City Hall, in the evening of May 11.

The Stockholm Challenge is based at KTH and is sponsored by the City of Stockholm, Ericsson and Sida. Event sponsors are also Sun Microsystems, SPIDER, Cisco and IDRC.