A sellout crowd of more than 270 Stevie Award winners, their guests, sponsors, and judges will attend the 5th annual Middle East & North Africa Stevie® Awards this Saturday evening, March 2 in Ras Al Khaiman, the United Arab Emirates.  Sponsored by the RAK Chamber of Commerce & Industry, the MENA Stevies are the region's only awards recognizing innovation in the workplace throughout 18 nations in the region.

Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie winners in the 2024 program were announced in January.  Earlier this month two Grand ("best of show") Stevie winners were announced, and a third will be revealed at the end of Saturday's proceedings.  The presentations will be broadcast live from 8:00 pm / 20:00 UAE standard time.

Here is the list of organizations that will be represented at Saturday's event.

Abdul Latif Jameel
Abu Dhabi Customs, Building and Maintenance Section
Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council
Abu Dhabi Sports Council
Acceligize
Ajman Transport Authority
Al Dhafra Region Municipality
Al Ghurair Investment
Almarai Company
AXS - TECOM Group
Azentio Software
Bagcilar Municipality
Big Data Minds MENA
Blacklion IT Marketing Agency
Capital 360 Event Experiences
Commercial Bank International
DAMAC Properties
Deputy of Legal Affairs and Regulations of Ministry of Culture, Saudi Arabia
DHL Express UAE
Dsquares
Dubai Courts - Case Preparation Department
Dubai Land Department
Ekol Logistics
Elaf Al TaqwaHotel - Elaf Hotel Company
EZONE Business Setup
Federal Authority for Government Human Resources, United Arab Emirates
INFLOW Network
Invita Company W.L.L.
KAFALAH Loan Guarantee Program
Masafi Hospital
Megamind IT Solutions
Melodica Music Academy
MEPCO
Ministry of HR and Social Development, Saudi Arabia
Ministry of Justice, United Arab Emirates
Mobile Communications Company of Iran
Now Health International
Numesys İleri Mühendislik
Parkville Pharmaceuticals
Petromin Express
Public Prosecution of Dubai
Public Works Authority, Qatar
Qatar Vision Production Company - Qvision
RAK Ceramics
RAK Digital Assets Oasis
RAK POLICE General Headquarters
RAKEZ - Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone
Riyadh Airports Company
Roads and Transport Authority
Royal Commission for Jubail & Yanbu
Ruwad – Sharjah SME
Sakan Foundation
Saudi Aramco
Saudi Aramco - Northern Area Production Engineering Department
Saudi Aramco - Office Services Department
SOCAR Turkiye
SOCAR Türkiye Enerji AŞ
Society of Autism Families
stc - Saudi Telecom Company
Streit Group FZ LLC
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
The Academy for Developing Administrative Leaders
The General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs, United Arab Emirates
The Institute of Consulting and Business Solutions
The Ministry of Interior, Bahrain
ZIGMA8 | 360º CREATIVE COMMUNICATIONS

Entries for the 2025 edition of the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards will be accepted starting this September.  Learn more at https://MENA.StevieAwards.com. 

Stevie-winner Vodafone Oman was established through a strategic partnership between the Oman Future Telecommunication Company and Vodafone Group, one of the largest providers of mobile, fixed, broadband, and digital TV services.

Vodafone Group is a British multinational telecommunications company. With its registered office and global headquarters in Newbury, Berkshire, England, it predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania.

In 2021, the company obtained a Class I License to establish and operate public mobile telecommunications services in the Sultanate of Oman, becoming the third telecom operator in the local market.My Vodafone in Oman
The My Vodafone app has been downloaded by over 2 million people across Oman. Through the app, customers can onboard themselves virtually in less than two minutes, including plan and number selection, identity verification using advanced AI and facial recognition capabilities, payment, and eSIM (and physical SIM delivery or pick-up). They also enable customers to replace their SIMs remotely, providing SIM-to-eSIM replacement within seconds.

Vodafone offers a monthly subscription model wherein customers can enable the auto-payment feature so that the user's account is charged on the plan’s renewal date without any human intervention to ensure uninterrupted service. Customers are given the ability to set an amount to be withdrawn automatically once a minimum threshold is reached.

They have also developed a feature called "Everything Is Okay (EIO)" which allows customers to check their account against any technical, financial, and network issues. Customers are presented with an issue and a way to resolve it, covering payments and renewals, account status, network, and device and SIM management.

Existing customers can digitally add up to 10 numbers under their main account in less than a minute using My Vodafone, including number selection, plan selection, payment, and SIM activation.

App Improvement & Service Expansion
To localize an international brand, Vodafone had to bring on a team of agencies that brought local insights with technological prowess.

The Vodafone Academy was an integrative program between the different agencies and Vodafone Oman that aims to build a circular talent economy that nurtures young Omani talents. The program was centered around three key pillars of marketing: media, content/creative, and social media. The program spanned six months and ultimately awarded two graduates full-time placements at the end of the program.

With fewer resources and less time in the market, it leveraged its agencies’ local and international expertise to develop a team that deepened its relationship with not only its partners but also the wider Omani community.

The app has enabled Vodafone to collect a huge amount of data points, which helps them make constant improvements to both the services and customer service.

Vodafone’s AI-enabled networks automatically detect and even pre-empt problems and threats via data analysis and create tickets for dispatch to the network operation center, saving significant time for affected customers and enhancing their experience.

Telecom operators have previously focused on selling services, i.e., voice and data. The My Vodafone app aims to offer more than that, providing other services in line with the Government of Oman’s digital ambitions: parking booking within Muscat and Nizwa in collaboration with local partners, with notifications when a reservation is about to expire; and high school grades in collaboration the Sultanate’s Ministry of Education, when students enter their seat ID to receive their grade automatically.

Entering Oman as a digital-first service, Vodafone said the speed of transformation that the pandemic brought to the world was an enabler for a winning launch and a solid foundation for the brand.

Vodafone Oman won a Bronze Stevie and three Gold Stevie Awards for Innovation in Cross-Media Marketing, Most Innovative Startup of the Year in Services, Most Innovative Advertising or Marketing Team of the Year, and for Innovation in Brand Development in the 2023 Middle East & North Africa Stevie^® Awards.

Interested in entering the 2024 Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards?

The Stevie® Awards, organizer of the world’s premier business awards programs, has issued a call for entries for the 2022 (third annual) Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, sponsored by the RAK Chamber of Commerce & Industry. Entry kits and complete details on the competition are available at http://MENA.StevieAwards.com.

The Middle East Stevie & North Africa Awards are the region’s only awards to recognize innovation in all its forms through the workplace. The awards are open to all organizations in 17 nations in the MENA region: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

All individuals and organizations - public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small - may submit any number of nominations to any number of the categories.

There are no entry fees in this awards program. Organizations may submit as many nominations as they would like, without cost. Instead, Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners will pay a “winners fee” for each successful nomination.

Nominations may be submitted online through two entry deadlines: November 4, 2021, and January 26, 2022. Winners’ fees payable will be lower for nominations submitted through the first deadline.

Interested in entering the 2022 Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards? 

Winners of the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards in the competition will be announced on March 24, 2022, and celebrated during a gala event in Ras Al Khaimah at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on May 20.

The competition features two new category groups for 2022. The Video Awards categories will recognize innovation in video productions including design, format, production, distribution, and/or interactivity. The Social Media Awards categories will recognize innovation in social media content creation, moderation, management, and marketing. Virtual events have been newly added to the Events Categories.

Nominations citing innovative achievements will be accepted and judged in both Arabic and English, in more than 100 categories across the following category groups:

• Apps & Websites
• Achievements
• Annual Reports & Other Publications
• Company/Organization
• Corporate Communications & Public Relations
• COVID-19 Response
• Customer Service
• Human Resources
• Live & Virtual Events
• Management
• Marketing
• New Products & Services
• Social Media
• Technology
• Videos

Winners of the 2021 edition of the awards included Al Anwar Medical Hospital, Boehringer Ingelheim, DHL Worldwide Express LLC, Dubai Global Village, Dubai Health Authority, Dubai Media Incorporated, Etihad Aviation Group, General Directorate for Traffic - Bahrain, Gulf Marketing Group (GMG), Intisar Foundation, Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure - Dubai, Ooredoo Kuwait, RAK Transport Authority, Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF), Stella Stays, VakifBank and many more.

The 2022 competition will be judged by more than 150 professionals around the world. Those who wish to apply to participate on one of the juries may do so at https://mena.stevieawards.com/sa-judge/register.

Newest Stevie Awards program recognizing innovation in 17 countries in Middle East and North Africa is now accepting entries through January 22

By popular demand, the Stevie Awards have announced a general entry deadline extension for its new Middle East Stevie Awards sponsored by RAK Chamber, UAE. The original final entry deadline was December 4. Entries will now be accepted through January 22.

All organizations operating in 17 nations in the Middle East and North Africa are eligible to submit nominations to the 2020 Middle East Stevie Awards. The awards will recognize innovative achievements since July 1, 2018. Complete information about the awards process is available at https://MENA.StevieAwards.com.

Nominations will be accepted and judged in Arabic and English from organizations of all types—large and small, for-profit and non-profit, publicly-held and privately-held—in more than 200 categories. Organizations may submit as many nominations as they’d like in these categories, at no cost. Categories are available across the following groups:

• Web Site, App, Annual Report & Other Publications, & Live Event Awards Categories
• Management Awards Categories
• Company / Organisation Awards Categories
• Corporate Communications & Public Relations Awards Categories
• Customer Service Awards Categories
• Human Resources Awards Categories
• Marketing Awards Categories
• New Product & Product Management Awards Categories
• Technology Awards Categories

Judging for the competition will be conducted by professionals around the world who will determine the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners in each category. Those winners will be announced the week of February 19. Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie winners will be honored, and Grand Stevie Award winners announced, at a gala awards banquet at the Waldorf Astoria in Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates on Saturday, March 21.

Instead of charging an entry fee for each nomination submitted, as many awards programs do, the competition will impose a winner’s fee on each Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie-winning nomination. Payment of the winner’s fee will unlock the many benefits of being a Stevie winner, including the right to publicly claim the recognition, a Stevie Award trophy, the right to use the winner’s seal, and more.

Hundreds of organizations across the MENA region have been recognized in Stevie Awards programs over the years, including ASDA'A BCW in United Arab Emirates, CarrefourSA in Turkey, DHL Express in Qatar, Gulf Bank in Kuwait, and Ooredoo in Oman, among many other prominent winners.

“With the Middle East Stevie Awards, we are able to recognize the innovation of many more organizations and executives in the MENA region,” said Michael Gallagher, president and founder of the Stevie Awards. “This will mean that many more organizations around the MENA region will be able to benefit from the brand-building and employee-recognition benefits of winning the world’s premier business award, the Stevie Award.”

About the RAK Chamber of Commerce and Industry
RAK Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RAK Chamber) is the second chamber of commerce commissioned in the United Arab Emirates incorporated on 22 October 1967, RAK Chamber adopts the spirit of innovation and creativity, strong leadership and initiative to support and develop business sectors to achieve excellence and become pioneers, focusing on clients, investors and business by meeting their needs and offering them added value. The chamber is keen to create and develop a system of sustainable enterprise relations, and it also works to provide a business environment and practices that enhance the culture of group work by working in a spirit of a unified team – along with responding to internal and external changes by providing information, data, procedures and laws for all concerned categories. This is in order to achieve transparency and credibility and to create a business-motivating environment so as to promote the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah as an economic hub in the United Arab Emirates.

RAK Chamber-sponsored Program to Recognize Innovation in the Workplace in 17 MENA Nations

The Stevie Awards, organizer of the world’s premier business awards programs, has opened entries for the 2020 (first annual) Middle East Stevie Awards, the first business awards program to recognize innovation in the workplace throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

The awards are produced by the creators of the prestigious American Business Awards® and International Business Awards®, which receive more than 12,000 nominations each year between all Stevie Awards programs.

The Middle East Stevie Awards are open to all organizations in 17 nations in the Middle East and North Africa: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

All individuals and organizations — public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small — may submit any number of nominations to any number of the categories, free of charge. Complete nomination details are available at http://MENA.StevieAwards.com.

Nominations that are awarded a Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stevie Award by the jury will be assessed a winners fee, the payment will unlock a number of benefits for the winner, including the right to claim the win, a Stevie Awards trophy, the right to use winners’ marks in promotions, and the right to receive the trophy on stage during a gala awards event in Ras Al Khaimah.

Nominations may be submitted online through two entry deadlines: November 6 and December 4, 2019. Any winners’ fees that might be payable for nominations submitted through the November 6 deadline will be discounted by $30.

Judging for the competition will be conducted by more than 100 professionals around the world. Those interested in participating on a jury may apply at http://MENA.StevieAwards.com. Stevie Awards competitions are esteemed for the rigor of their judging process and the experience and diversity of the jurors. More than 1,000 professionals around the world participate on Stevie Awards juries each year.

Winners of the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards in the competition will be announced on January 8, 2020 and celebrated during a gala event in RAK on February 8, 2020.

The Stevie Awards trophies, designed by the company that makes the Oscar and other major international awards, are among the world's most coveted prizes.

Nominations will be accepted and judged in Arabic and English, in more than 100 categories across the following category groups:

• Web Site, App, Annual Report & Other Publications, & Live Event Awards Categories
• Management Awards Categories
• Company / Organization Awards Categories
• Corporate Communications & Public Relations Awards Categories
• Customer Service Awards Categories
• Human Resources Awards Categories
• Marketing Awards Categories
• New Product & Product Management Awards Categories
• Technology Awards Categories

Interested in receiving a 2020 Middle East Stevie Award?