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“Our sponsorship for 2016 is an opportunity to celebrate the young professionals who are telling rich, creative brand stories using our platforms. We believe creativity unlocks the power of technology and young people in the creative community especially are at an exciting place to craft beautiful and relevant work. Young creatives can play an important role in solving bigger problems by building or creating for mobile as more people become connected,” says Rob Newlan, head of Facebook Creative Shop EMEA.

“The Loerie Awards are about celebrating great ideas and increasingly the Facebook platform is a canvas to bring great ideas to life and share it with millions of people. We want to support the young talent that is redefining the rules of creativity by exploiting mobile, the most important medium of the generation. In South Africa alone, Facebook has more than 14 million active users, 90% of them on mobile,” adds Nunu Ntshingila, head of Facebook, Africa.

Facebook events

• 17 August 2016: Facebook Made on Mobile workshop – a full-day workshop in partnership with KCap (KwaMashu Community Advancement Projects) aimed at equipping disadvantaged youth with the skills to create marketing campaigns for small businesses using only their phones.
  
• 18 August 2016: Facebook Hack for Good – a 48 hour creative hackathon for some of the best advertising students nationwide which, in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, will see them create a cutting edge video campaign.
  
• 19 August 2016: Student Portfolio Day – Facebook will support the Adams and Adams Student Portfolio Day, giving students the tools to build online creative portfolios, and promoting these to the industry using Facebook Canvas Ads.
  
• 19 August 2016: DSTV Seminar of Creativity – Sarah Personette, vice president of Facebook's Global Business Marketing team. Facebook is delivering a keynote here.

Click here to view the list of the Loeries 2016 student finalists.