The Green Growth Hackathon focused on eco-friendly farming and enhancing food security—key areas critical to ensuring a sustainable future. Over the course of an intense 48 hours, participants were challenged to develop and present solutions that could transform industries, improve resource efficiency, and mitigate the effects of climate change.

At the heart of the hackathon was the competitive spirit that drove participants to push the boundaries of what’s possible. After rigorous rounds of brainstorming, coding, and collaboration, four innovations emerged as the winners;

• Grin Tech took home the top honors, emerging as the overall winner for its groundbreaking innovation. The judges were impressed with Grin Tech’s solution’s potential to revolutionize eco-friendly practices.
• MicroVest and Hi Monitor shared second place. Both teams earned a coveted opportunity to pitch their ideas at the prestigious Latitude 59 event in Nairobi, positioning them on a global stage where they can attract investment and scale their solutions.
• Harvest Link, won the People’s Choice Award, proving that public support can be a powerful force in driving sustainable change.

The hackathon didn’t end with the announcement of the winners. Four other promising innovations—Farm Quest, Eco Flash Dryer, Hydroponics, and Agri Link—secured spots in the Innovation Hub’s upcoming bootcamp. This subsequent section offers these teams a useful possibility to refine and in addition increase their answers with the guide of mentors and industry specialists. The bootcamp will assist these innovators beef up their standards, scale their ideas, and prepare them for actual-global software, in the long run amplifying their impact on inexperienced technology.

The Green Growth Hackathon is a testament to the power of collaboration to deliver meaningful change. Bringing together key partners from both the public and private sectors, the event brings innovation that goes beyond the hackathon. All partners play an important role in creating an environment in which sustainable innovation is possible.

The Green Growth Hackathon proved that digital innovation and environmental sustainability can continue. The event highlights the importance of equipping young inventors with tools and resources to empower them to create a greener future, creating a space where ideas can turn into actionable solutions.

The post National ICT Innovation Hub Announce Winners of the Green Growth Hackathon appeared first on PC Tech Magazine.

The competition has been organized in collaboration with Outbox, a leading innovation hub in Uganda, and Garage 48. It has brought together 100 brilliant minds to turn ideas into technology innovations.

The MTN App Challenge was intentionally opened up for both students and non-students with the aim of gathering people from different fields and skill sets and uniting them into well-working teams.

Introducing the idea owners @ the @mtnug App challenge #MTNInnovate pic.twitter.com/QVi7HwZ5Fq

— Outbox (@OutboxHub) May 29, 2015

Speaking at the launch ceremony, MTN Uganda Chief Marketing Officer, Mapula Bodibe said:

“As a leading ICT brand in the market, MTN believes a strong focus on digitization will usher in a new world order for emerging markets. This involves providing and supporting platforms that enable technology infrastructure development and advancement,” said Ms. Bodibe.

“To this end, MTN has a strong focus on the development of digital services and through the app challenge, we believe we will be well positioned to help create solutions that, if successful, would continue MTN’s vision of a new, ICT-lead world,” she added.

She challenged participants to be change-makers rather than just critics.

“Each one of us has products that we love to use and criticize. Through this challenge, MTN is giving you an opportunity to stop the criticism and do something about it,” noted the CMO.

In a country that still relies so heavily on Agriculture, ICT Innovation as been at the forefront of driving and delivering life impacting solutions. Through competitions like this, MTN aims to tap into the passion of the technology and change enthusiasts in Uganda to stimulate creativity, entrepreneurship and the incubation of startups that would accurately help to alleviate unemployment.

This edition of the MTN App Challenge is part of a longer journey in which MTN Uganda looks to unlock the innovation potential of the country; the climax of which will be the launch of The Innovation Lab later this year.

The launch also featured a keynote address from Fundi Bots founder Solomon King who commended the competition as a key platform to enable people do more with technology.

“The MTN App Challenge is a great opportunity to build great applications that will change how people use technology. It’s also an amazing platform to build teams that can harness various skills to bring a product to life,” said Solomon King.

He also challenged the developers to ensure they work on solutions they’re able to commit to for the long term.

“As the ideas take shape over the weekend, I encourage the application developers to build for scale and sustainability and to explore the idea of an international market, which means long term global business strategies and growth partnerships,” he added.

MTN’s vision is deliver a bold, new digital world, and as such, MTN Uganda is looking to, through this any other future initiatives, continue concentrating its efforts on creation of brand new digital applications that will – in line with the nation’s transformation agenda.

The winners fro each category will get a cash prize of $2,500 each in addition to promotion and commercialization on the MTN App Store and a number of other incentives, while the Audience’s favorite will get a cash prize of $1,000 and Internet for 3 months for all team members.

Winners will be announced on Sunday 31^st May, 2015.

The post Report: MTN Uganda App Challenge Commences appeared first on PC Tech Magazine.

Richard Zulu describes himself as a “start-up enthusiast, Tech rockstar, Developer Outreach, Internet and social media addict.” He has a passion for “enabling individuals within the tech community turn their ideas and products into businesses”. He is currently a co-founder and Program Diretor of Outbox Hub in Kampala.

Below is the interview he did with PC Tech Magazine – this interview was first published in the February Issue [print].

Q: Tell us about Outbox

Outbox is a technology incubation, collaboration space, and innovation hub for techies – as well as other people in the technology space to meet and create ideas that they can later on turn into sustainable businesses that utilize a mobile phone and the internet.

Those are the three aspects of Outbox. So, first of all, we focus on fostering technology entrepreneurship – which we do through the incubation of utmost 5 startups in our incubation program. We take these through business and technology training, thereby helping them become sustainable businesses.

As far as Collaboration is concerned, we create a space where like-minded people can come together can co-create. You see, when businesses thrive, there’s also a possibility of inter-marketing, because of the various skills that these individuals have. All that boosts entrepreneurship. That’s done through the space, and also the kind of events that we hold.

Our main focus is entrepreneurship, but not everybody is born to be an entrepreneur. Which brings me to our third aspect, Capacity Building.

We engage with different groups in various events through which we equip them with skills we believe can empower them to perform better in their various fields. We hosted over 20 events last year alone.
We’ve been able to work and take in three companies – startups – and last year one of them was able to obtain funding to help them set up.

Q: How significant is the funding?

It’s very significant. Quite a lot.

Q: Which company is that?

Unfortunately, I can’t disclose.

Q: How does Outbox benefit?

At the end of the day, we want to have impact. Our current focus is to create sustainable businesses that drive relevance on the mobile and web. Having such milestones will encourage other people to embrace the kind of initiatives that we are trying to push out here – it leads us more to our final objective.

Q: How do you sustain your activities?

Outbox’s sustainability model is built around quite a number of things. First of all, Outbox provides the co-working space – a space that comes at a price. Entrepreneurs pay to have access to the internet, access to our partner network – Google, Samsung, e.t.c – and access to our business support services.

We also host a number of events – people rent the premises to host various events.
Outbox is run as a business.

But you have partners who are giving you seed funding; how do they benefit from your activities?
Most of the partners we work with align with the objective of creating sustainable businesses, and that’s how we look out for our partners. Working with such an initiative helps them push their objectives as we achieve ours. Having all of us working together in the ecosystem will later on help us realize our goals.

Q: You’ve heard of the law of diffusion of innovation? How does this fit into your business plan?

One thing we have realized is that it’s still a challenge for most of the people to understand what we do. When you talk of words like Innovation, collaboration – some people don’t quite understand what we do.

Most of the people we have in this space are early adopters – people who go out of their way to learn what it is that’s going on here.

The kind of marketing we do is mainly through out-reach activities – universities and the like. Our approach to outreach is very targeted, and we have intentionally kept it that way.

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