The largest hackathon in Africa set the stage in Lagos, Nigeria from June 10 to 12 at the Africa FinTech Foundry, Victoria Islands.

Developers in Nigeria were called upon on a quest to “Accelerating Artificial Intelligence & Big Data Through Edge Computing” –– the theme of this year’s Hackathon.

“This year’s edition witnessed over 100% growth in participation from 400+ participants in 2021 to 800+ participants in 2022. We also saw a growth in the quality of solutions that emerged. The average participant age was 20 and there was representation from 36 states in Nigeria,“ said, Foster Awintiti Akugri, President, Hacklab Foundation.

“They were tasked to develop solutions that address unique problems in Nigeria using Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Edge Computing. Nigeria is known for its unique problems, and so is it known for its enormous market size/opportunities, budding tech ecosystem/talents and becoming a home for investments. This hackathon was clear evidence of the rise of the tech community in Nigeria and we hope to do more in contributing to increasing youth participation in such skilled development programs and breed a generation of solutionists”, he also said.

Speaking at the event are Nigerian industry experts such as Christian Okoli, COO of BlueAfric Media, the acclaimed largest media company in the East, Mrs. Lawumi Fajemirokun, Executive Director of the Oladele Fajemirokun Foundation, Sean Burrowes, COO of Ingressive for Good, Mayowa Adeoti, Senior Business Program Manager, EMEA, Microsoft, Kenechukwu Egbue, Program Manager, Oladele Fajemirokun Foundation, Gbenga Onalaja, Head of Marketing at Kora, Haneefah, Abdurranhman Lekki, and from Ghana, Henry Badger, Agile Consultant, Sedem Balfour, Ecosystem Manager, Hacklab Foundation, Klenam Fiadzoe, Growth & Innovation, The Tomorrow Breed.

They shared their expert knowledge and relevant industry AI/Big Data use cases with the participants to guide their solutions to be more practical.

With 12 teams qualifying to the pitching stage after the code review process, the winning solutions were:

Winner - SafeKids: An edge-based facial recognition system used to track kids while they are in school and keep their parents apprised through SMS alerts.  This awards a N500K grant to further develop their solution. Two Nvidia Deep Learning Institute Paid vouchers, SMS and USSD code credits from African Media Training, Video Documentary and Branding support from BlueAfric Media.

1st Runner Up - PheraCAM: A live facial recognition AI camera used in public places to detect threats and unregistered faces. The solution’s use cases include tracking customers in a bank branch, members in a church, pupils in a school, a home alert system, car real-time camera-based alarm system to detect unregistered members by the car owner trying to access the car, etc. This awards the a N300K grant to further develop their solution. Two Nvidia Deep Learning Institute Paid vouchers, SMS and USSD code credits from Africa’s, Media Training, Video Documentary and Branding support from BlueAfric Media.

2nd Runner Up - EduScore: An edge-powered student App used to manage student information access, registration, exams and scores. This solution helps manage traffic and reduce downtimes on university portals/websites at peak times when students are accessing their results, registering for their courses, and sometimes taking online tests. This awards the a N200K grant to further develop their solution. Two Nvidia Deep Learning Institute Paid vouchers, SMS and USSD code credits from Africa’s, Media Training, Video Documentary and Branding support from BlueAfric Media.

The teams went through several stages of assessment. These included idea validation, pitch deck review, code assessment and the non-technical judging (grand finale stage pitch). Check out the leaderboard for the top 12 teams that made it to the grand finale.

All the winning teams will receive business development and mentorship support from Africa Fintech Foundry to shape their value propositions and develop their products to scale for commercial opportunities. They will also receive 6 months of free access to the Africa FinTech Foundry co-working space.

This event was successful with partners like the Oldadele Fajemirokun Foundation, Nvidia, Ingressive for Good, Coven Labs, BlueAfric Media, WiiCreate and Africa FinTech Foundry.

The event was streamed live on the Hacklab Foundation’s Facebook & YouTube pages.

Up next is Hacklab Uganda. Follow our social media pages for more updates: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, YouTube.

Are you a techie? Participate in our ongoing Hacklab Africa Developer Census: https://www.hacklabfoundation.org/census/

Hacklab Foundation is an international nonprofit organization headquartered in Ghana with a focus on preparing the youth for future digital jobs through technology education and skills development. Since its inception in 2015, Hacklab Foundation has directly impacted over 13,500 people, organized hackathons, robotics, and coding boot camps for kids between the ages of 7yrs – 13yrs supported 1000+ women in tech and placed over 1300+ youth in jobs.