The GAGE Awards 2021 has finally opened its portal for voting of digital practitioners who have emerged from the 20 categories. After 2 long months of intense nominations, the final lists of nominees in the various categories have been released.
Announcing the commencement of voting, the Convener of the GAGE Awards, Mr Johnson Anorh, disclosed that it wasn’t an easy task pruning down over 15,000 nominations as Nigerians made their choice on who best served them in the outgoing year using the digital platforms. The numbers have been overwhelming as in less than 24 hours, we have had over 1.4Million website visits.
Nominees for the Banking App of the Year are VBANK, GTBANK, Zenith Bank, Access Bank and Alat by WEMA BANK. The Data Service Provider of the Year include; MTN, Airtel, Globacom, Swift Networks and 9Mobile. The Breakout App of the Year category nominees are; Airopay, WhotAfrica, Zoom, TiKTok, and Clubhouse. Online Comedian of the Year nominees are; Mr Macaroni, Lasisi Elenu, Sydney Talker, MC Lively, and 2019 winner, Taaooma. Influencer of the year category nominees are; Aisha Yesufu, Tomike Adeoye, Erica Nlewedim, Nengi Hampson and Pamilerin.
Other category nominees are Entrepreneur of the Year; Charles Oyakhilome(CEO,Airopay), Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi(Founder, Paystack), Tope Awotona(CEO, Calendly), Babs Ogundeyi (CEO, Kuda Bank and Chijioke Dozie, CEO, OneFi and Carbon).Online News Platform of the year has AriseTvOnline, ChannelsTv Online, Opera News, Punch Online, BBC Pidgin. Online Film/Video documentary of the Year nominees include; Bayi by Dianne Russet, Fishbone by Anakle Films, CNN Documentary on EndSars, the Critics Company.
The nominees for Online Campaign of the Year are *444# USSD campaign by Airtel, #ShotOnOppo by Oppo, #WearItForMe campaign by MTN and Dettol Hand Wash Challenge. Nominees for Website of the year include; Bet9ja.com,iselify.com, dstvafica.com, trace.tv, and medplusnig.com. Nominees for Content Creator of the Year (platform) of the year are; NdaniTv, RedTv, Accelerate Tv, NetFlix and PulseTv. The nominees for Webseries of the Year include; Shuga Naija, Skinny Girl in Transit, The Mens Club, Therapy and Call to bar. Nominees for Blog of the Year are; Nairaland, Linda Ikeji, Bella Naija, NaijaLoaded and Nairametrics. The nominees for the Best Digital Financial Platform include; Paystack, Flutterwave, PAGA, Opay and Palmcredit. Nominees for App of the Year are; TikTok, Microsoft teams, Zoom, Google Meet and Netflix. The Nominees for Podcast of the Year include; Pod Save Africa, Letter to boys, I said what I said, From Lagos with Love and The Irregular show.
The GAGE Award public voting is only restricted to five categories, they are; Online Comedian of the Year, Banking App of the Year, Digital Artiste of the Year, Breakout App of the Year and Data Service Provider of the Year. However, the Online Influencer of the Year category has been divided into the voters choice i.e the audience select their winner and the GAGE Academy choice which would be determined by the GAGE Academy. Winners of the other 15 categories such as Website of the Year, Best Digital Financial Platform etc. will also be judged by the GAGE academy based on pre-defined measuring indicators that are beyond the reach or knowledge of the generality of the public. The voting will be open till the 15th of March 2021 when the winners emerge.
GAGE Awards seeks to celebrate and spotlight the best individuals, brands or groups who have enriched lives in 2020 by leveraging on the power of digital to simplify our everyday lives. The award recognizes, celebrates, rewards, and amplifies the eventual winners’ outstanding activities and contributions to the digital ecosystem yearly.