Africa’s Francophone Countries Launch Mobile Applications Hackathon

Posted by Staff Writer on Sunday, July 10, 2011 at 5:26pm.

It’s no surprise to most Africans that Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria are leading the pack when it comes to developing Africa’s Information, Communication and Technology Sector.  This is especially true in the mobile application sub-sector.  What we haven’t seen much of in the English media are the African Francophone countries participation in this sector - Until Now.   In what seems to be a really smart move to identify and build talent in these countries, the first-ever mobile applications hackathon in Africa is being organized by six technology labs in 4 countries within Francophone Africa.

The hackathon’s goal is to identify communities of developers, their expertise and also their needs and bring together engineers, developers and enthusiasts to design simple applications that meet the needs of the African people.

MobileHackAF is scheduled for September 24th, 2011 and would bring together multiple developers in various cities of Africa, whereby each hub/community would host 3 - 5 teams of 2 to 3 developers for a 24-hour marathon of hacking.

At the end of this 24-hour hackathon, each team will present its application and the winning team will receive prizes from the sponsors.

This event will take place simultaneously in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), Cotonou (Benin), Dakar (Senegal) and Douala (Cameroon).

The technology labs involved are Akendewa (Côte d’Ivoire), Jokkolabs (Sénégal), Appstech (Cameroon), Act Dakar (Sénégal), Etri Labs (Bénin); and iHub Senegal (Sénégal).