Tech4Africa launches Random Hack of Kindness, focusses on workplace skills and utility value

Tech4Africa, one of the continent’s largest tech conferences, has announced the addition of a hackathon. The hackathon, which is set to take place two days before the actual conference is aimed at improving workplace skills and utility value.

The hackathon, which will take place on 6 and 7 October, will be the first at Tech4Africa after a two year hiatus. According to Tech4Africa founder Gareth Knight, the break came about because the organisers felt that their offering wasn’t different enough to what was already out there.

“The first two Hackathons we ran were great days and I think the attendees got a lot out of it,” he says, “but we felt afterwards that they didn’t live up to our expectations. And then looking at the ecosystem, we felt that there were already enough events doing that, so why try compete on that basis?”

According to Knight, that perspective changed when he asked the audience at one event how many of them were “using some sort of source control, or CI for deployments, or who worked in teams bigger than two.”

Read more: Social hackathon to create solutions around early childhood development

The Tech4Africa founder says the answers were shockingly poor and that he was thus inspired to do something a little different. The focus of the hackathon will be on building a utility product for the African market, with the core skills taught being code collaboration and shipping product.

“When you unpack this,” he says, “it’s basically our mantra of: Want to build big tech product for Africa? Focus on product with daily value for user. Mobile first. Make it easy to share. Make sure cash-flow has you in it.”

Unlike most Hackathons, the attendees will all work on the same project, but within their different skill sets and abilities, and everyone will share the same codebase. The objective, the conference organisers says, will be to release a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) onto Github in two days, for anyone to take a look at, and to make sure that everyone attending has the skills to collaborate on software projects of 2 or 20. After that, if the MVP is good enough it will be demonstrated at the main Tech4Africa event and to the Johannesburg City Council.

Read more: NASA to host global hackathon aimed at fixing life on Earth and in space

“It’s hard to overstate how far behind we are in Africa in some respects,” says Knight “and we think that focussing on developing skills around collaboration and releasing products is the most productive thing we can do right now to help grow innovation in Africa. We’re excited by this approach, and so far the number of signups is validating this. It’s going to be awesome!”.

In support of the hackathon, Microsoft is sponsoring Azure cloud instances which will give the developers the ability to push their code live, as well as FREE online training. Tech4Africa will be running Google Hangouts beforehand to help the developers get up to speed.

More details can be found on the Hackathon website, the main website at: Tech4Africa.com and anyone can register online. Tickets are free.