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Lynn Munjanja-Herald Reporter

Zimbabwe scooped five gold medals at the just-ended Unesco India-Africa Hackathon 2022 held last week in India.

A hackathon, also known as a codefest, is a social coding event that brings computer programmers and other interested people together to improve or build a new software programme.

People engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. The Zimbabwean team consisted of 18 members. Besides the medals, they won 300 000 rupees which is equivalent to US$3 680.

One of the participants, Frank Makeba, thanked the Government for giving the team the opportunity to participate at the hackathon.

“I am happy and I would like to thank the Government for this opportunity to go to India,” he said. 

“We were working in teams of six, three Africans and three Indians. We were given various topics to work on. There were 20 problem statements which we had to solve and my group’s theme was agriculture.

“I created a voice assistant where a farmer can contact an extension officer on the phone on any problem and get assistance. I spent 36 hours developing this programme and this voice assistant helps with all agricultural problems that the farmer can think of.” 

National University of Science and Technology student Nyasha Mandizvidza said she was excited to be part of the programme and visiting one of the countries leading in technology to showcase her skills.“I would like to thank God for this opportunity of going to represent my country abroad and showcasing my skills,” she said.

 “Our theme was linking water and sanitation. We created a web portal that will assist decision makers analyse past data with current data and our scope was public toilets in the city centres.

“We noted that in India and Africa we have a number of public toilets, hence the web portal will assist decision makers on how many more toilets to build and renovate and this will help in sanitation.” 

Another student, Daniel Chembesi, said he was working on an education theme and they created a game which would teach kids about cyber security.

“Children are being exposed to cybercrimes which include hacking, pornography, identity theft amongst others,” he said. “We developed a game which has some teachings so that when they enjoy they also learn and it will not become boring.”

Twenty-two African countries and India participated in the hackathon competitions.

Other participants where from Uganda, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Niger, Namibia, Mozambique, Morocco, Mauritius, Mali, Malawi, Botswana, Cameroon, Eswathini, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Equatorial Guinea, Lesotho and Togo.