BLAZE E-Sports Tournament Kicks Off In Kilifi County Days After Launch
Safaricom has rolled out E-Sports Tournament under the BLAZE outfit in the coast region, in a quest to harness talents and abilities of youth aged between 18 years and 26 years looking to take up gaming as a career.
The e-sports tournament consists of FIFA 19 and Tekken 7 knockouts running on Play Station 4 and is broken down into 10 grassroots knockouts and 5 regional finals. The tournament targets both casual and avid gamers across the country with a KES 100,000 prize pool up for grabs in each region. Regional winners take home KES 50,000 with the first and second runners up winning KES 30,000 and KES 20,000 respectively.
The regional engagement will culminate in a creation camp in Mombasa between 28th – 30th August where entrepreneurs will have an opportunity to pitch their business ideas, with 24 entrepreneurs, broken down into the top 3 in 8 categories, sharing KES 800,000 in business support. The creation camp will be followed by the Coast regional finals of the BLAZE e-sports tournament on 31st August. Both events will happen at the Kenya School of Government in Mombasa.
“Sports is one of the major events that define Kenyan culture. With the introduction of the BLAZE e-sports tournament, we want to provide a platform for our youth to hone their talents and possibly earn a living from it,” said Safaricom CEO, Michael Joseph.
Like previously held summits, youth interacted with local mentors and industry experts through interest-specific pods and workshops. The Kilifi Edition featured mentors such as Naiboi (musician), Brian Diang’a (pro-gamer), Caleb Karuga (Agripreneur) and Joanna Kinuthia (Digital Content Creator), among others.
Besides the mentors, BLAZE has partnered with Google, IBM and Wezesha to provide a mix of content, training and employment opportunities to BLAZE subscribers who attend the summits.
