Microsoft Corporation is organising a competition worth $50,000 (about Rwf34 million) aimed at equipping  students with new skills, testing their ability to compete with the brightest students around the world and winning cash prizes among others.

"Microsoft Imagine Cup is the world’s premier student technology competition and we invite all eligible students to use their imagination and passion to create a technology solution in one of our competitions and challenges,” reads a statement from the corperation.

"The challenge is categorised into three: Games, Innovation, and World Citizenship. The team will come up with an original idea, plan, build the project, and submit it to Imagine Cup. It can either be purely software or a combination of software and hardware,” the statement adds.

The contest is open to all Rwandan students who were 16 years of age and above as of September 10, 2013 and are enrolled or will be enrolled as students between January 1, 2013 and July 31, 2014. Students can apply in groups of not more than four people.

The best team will be selected to represent Rwanda in the Imagine Cup Semi-finals in Seattle, US.

Besides, all first-place teams in the three main competitions win $50,000 and will also get an opportunity to meet Microsoft founder and billionaire, Bill Gates.

Prince Gashongore, from the College of Science and Technology (University of Rwanda) is geared up to face other Rwandans in the national competition.

"We are creating an e-biogas system controlled on a windows phone. It’s a combination of both hardware and software and with this, we intend to solve the problem of power shortage,” he said.

Contestants have until March 31, 2014 to submit their applications on the Imagine Cup website, www.imaginecup.com.

Over the past ten years, more than 1.65 million students from over 190 countries have participated in the Imagine Cup challenge.