Contest Against Corona: imc quiz app supports GIZ’s awareness campaign in Africa, Asia and MENA

The “Contest against Corona” launches today: a gamified Covid-19 online quiz with weekly prizes, which will run until May 21st. After reaching 100,000 participants in 54 countries with the first contestin December, the entertaining, salient international information campaign is out and about in a new look this year: this time the quiz software is provided by imc’s BizQuiz, and as a result participants will have the opportunity to choose fun avatars and invite friends to a quiz duel.

The competition is sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and organised by atingi, a digital learning project of the Deutsche Gesellschaft Für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).

The purpose of the contest is the endeavor to contribute to educating citizens in the target regions about COVID-19, because access to education and high-quality information is still difficult in many developing countries, while misinformation is going rampant. Information overload and “pandemic fatigue” threaten the vaccination campaigns and other crucial measures to contain Covid-19 in developing countries – and Contest Against Corona offers an appealing, playful quiz format to regain the attention of citizens again.

Currently salient topics such as vaccinations and the effects of the new Covid-19 variants are the focus of the nearly 300 questions one can play, but also popular myths and basic topics such as symptoms, treatment and community mitigation. The game is available in English, Arabic and French. Participants can win daily, weekly and high score prizes like a Samsung S10 and a 12-month online accredited university degree from prestigious universities like MIT. All participants can also earn an atingi learning certificate.

To make the contest happen, an experienced software provider was sought who would be able to set up a browser-based quiz application in three different languages, that works on all mobile devices. Further requirements were that players should be able to compete “live” against each other in a multi-player mode, receive points, display important information about the competition design and the ability to handle up to 150,000 players. imc AG from Saarbrücken was able to prevail. With its educational game "BizQuiz" it has won over numerous customers with its solution since 2016.

Dr. Greg Blackburn, Alliance Manager at imc, heads the project at imc: “We are thrilled to be part of this special project. The education about COVID-19 and the fight against misinformation are important topics. And, in our opinion, lifelong education is the best way to help people reach their full potential."

Marisa Steinmetz, who manages the Contest Against Corona project at atingi states: „We aim to help protect human lives with the quiz. Therefore it was important to us to choose a reliable, high-quality software provider with a track record of projects of this scale and who has a real partner mentality. We believe that we have succeeded in finding all that in imc and are optimistic that this format can also be expanded to other topics relevant to our target groups in the future."