Global young innovators stand to win $ 1 million as part of Nokia’s “Growth Economy Venture Challenge.’’ Nokia’s global Calling All Innovators 2010 competition targeting innovators, with participants expected to create a mobile product or service that raises the standard of living or enhances the lives of the local people .

The global challenge is not limited to hardware or software and will reward innovations geared towards enhancing the standards of living and return on the million bucks investments. The submissions can also expand beyond the mobile phone.

The prize money will be invested in a single winning organisation with the best idea as decided by a combination of judges from Nokia Growth Partners, Nokia’s venture arm, and Forum Nokia- Nokia’s organization dedicated to third party developers and other innovators. Ten finalists from the contest will be invited to present their ideas and business models to a panel of Nokia business people and private venture capitalists.

The competition officially kicks off on February 1 and finalists will be announced by mid May 2010 while the final winner will be announced in June 2010. The deadline for submissions is April 18. There are four main categories in the competition namely;

Eco/Being Green: Like its name implies, this category challenges developers to help save the planet with innovative, eco-friendly applications for use on Nokia devices.

Entertainment: Here’s your chance to submit apps that rock, and show off the coolest multimedia features that are available on the latest Nokia mobile devices. This includes music, multimedia and games.

Productivity: This category seeks mobile applications that make consumer’s daily lives easier and helps them to be more efficient, such as utilities, business, or personal finance applications.

Life Improvement: This category seeks applications that positively affect the daily lives of people living in developing countries, and may include education, agriculture, health and more.

Announcing the competition in Las Vegas, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo called on innovators to do good by bringing mobile solutions to parts of the world that can benefit most. He explained that mobile solutions can be quite profitable, but not exploitive, leading to financial “win-win” scenarios for both innovators and consumers.

“We’ve seen what the tech community can do when it focuses on problems that are also opportunities”, Kallasvuo says. “We want to channel that energy toward improving lives in the developing world.”

As examples of innovations in growth economies, Mr Kallasvuo speaks about several Nokia solutions and projects such as Nokia Life Tools, Nokia Tej and others.

“This competition is meant to bring out the creativity and innovation of local innovators to come up with locally relevant mobile phone technology solutions that can be applied to uplift the living standards of the people,” says Agatha Gikunda, Nokia’s Solutions Manager for East and Southern Africa.

Ms Gikunda says that Nokia is ready to assist and collaborate with innovators with ground- breaking applications and solutions that could impact on the economy and help generate employment opportunities, especially for young people.

To  learn more and enter  your submissions, click here.