A Wartburg College student channeled his inner Steve Jobs to help his team win the $20,000 grand prize at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Global Startup Workshop in Marrakech, Morocco.

Kwabena Owusu-Amoah, a junior from Ghana representing a team of 10 U.S. and international Wartburg students and graduates, pitched a software application to reduce high maternal mortality rates in his country and elsewhere at the Global Business Plan Competition, March 24-26, defeating teams from Harvard, Dartmouth and Stanford in the finals.

The cellphone application — initially part of a multifaceted strategy that includes construction of a health clinic in Ghana — would enable community health officials in rural sub-Sahara Africa to record vital pregnancy information, which could be accessed by doctors in cities.

According to the United Nations, women in sub-Sahara Africa have a 1-in-16 chance of dying during pregnancy and childbirth compared to 1-in-4,000 in developed countries. In Ghana, the maternal mortality rate is 13.6-in-4,000 and is most pronounced in rural areas.

Ten teams vied at the MIT competition, billed as “the world’s premier workshop” dedicated to “building entrepreneurial ecosystems globally,” bringing together business, education and government leaders to support “next-generation entrepreneurs.”

Each team had a mentor to guide them through the process involving a one-minute “elevator pitch,” a question-and-answer session and a final presentation. Othman Laraki, co-founder and president of Color Genomics and formerly a Twitter vice president, coached Amoah.

“He was pretty blunt. He told me I didn’t have a winning presentation,” Amoah recalled. “He made me watch presentations by (Apple co-founder) Steve Jobs and told me, ‘When you go up on stage, take your time. For at least for six seconds, just walk across the stage. The audience will be in suspense thinking, what’s this guy going to say?

“And then,” Amoah continued, “I said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, what I’m going to do is introduce you to an app that will change health-care delivery across the world.’ As soon as I said it, I got applause from the crowd, just as he predicted.”

The software application would take advantage of a high penetration of flip-phone usage in rural Ghana, as well as some smartphones.

“The irony is that even though the people in these rural areas don’t have access to health care, clean water or proper sanitation, they all have cell phones,” Amoah said.

The application is called Obaa 2.0, which in Ghana means ‘honorable woman,’” Amoah said.

The Wartburg students previously were awarded a $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace grant to build a rural two-room clinic in Oyibi, Ghana.

“When a community health officer visits a woman at the clinic or their home, they would take the basic information about their pregnancy and health history — all the vital information a doctor needs to know — and put it into the app,” Amoah said. “The app would organize the details, which would be presented to doctors in urban areas.”

The doctors would “examine” the woman virtually — based on the data and photos — and then send recommendations back to the community health officer.

The MIT victory had added benefits, including use of an office in Boston for a year, the opportunity for up to five members of the team to live on the MIT campus with a $1,500 monthly stipend for up to six months, connections with Boston-based entrepreneurs and MIT alumni, and mentoring by MIT professors and lecturers.

Amoah also was invited to speak at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Casablanca, Morocco, in May.

Amoah and Anne Epley Birtwistle, a junior from Mason City, will oversee the construction of the clinic this summer. The Ghana Health Service will provide a community health worker. The Charisbel Health Service (the health charity arm of the Pentecostal Church in Ghana) is partially subsidizing an ultrasound machine.

“We started the Hecuba Group (named after a queen in Greek mythology with 19 children) to develop solutions to socio-economic problems around the world,” Amoah said. “We want to expand into other areas.”

The others in the Hecuba Group are:

• Madison Stumbo, junior, Boone
• Ryan Shields, junior, Iowa City
• Olaniyi Omiwale, junior, Nigeria
• Sibusiso Kunene , senior, Swaziland
• Kofi Manteaw, junior, Johnston
• Nobert Kimario, freshman, Tanzania
• Yuk Teng Chan, 2014 midyear graduate, Tanzania
• Shalom Nwaokolo, a 2012 graduate, Nigeria

Dr. Jennifer McBride, assistant professor of religion, is the project adviser.