A little while ago, we told you about the return of the hackathon to Tech4Africa. Unlike past iterations, this year’s hackathon sees the conference organisers challenge participants to build a utility product for the African market, with the core skills taught being code collaboration and shipping product. To help ensure that this actually happens, Tech4Africa is calling on established development teams to join the hackathon.
“Our contention,” say Tech4Africa founder Gareth Knight, “is that the Europeans and Americans are going to figure out pretty quickly that the African market is going to be big enough to target once the US$50 smartphone reaches ubiquity, and indeed some of them already have, but they’re not local and they don’t understand the local market, so there is a gap”.
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“That said,” he adds, “we also think there is a lack of skill around technical execution in the African market. So whilst the Hackathon doesn’t solve it, it will give the participants the confidence to build and release something, so we start the cycle sooner.”
In a press release sent to Memeburn, Tech4Africa points to the Skype and PayPal mafia as and example of how how important it is for anyone to gain industry knowledge from people who have already done it.
Read more: Gareth Knight: Tech4Africa 2015 to concentrate on local stories
Unlike most Hackathons, all the attendees will all work on the same project, but within their different skill sets and abilities. According to the organisers, that means there are plenty of opportunities for experienced developers to pass on their skills for the next generation of hackers.
To support this, Microsoft are 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.
“It’s pretty simple, says Knight: “as an organisation we’re not about ivory towers and fishbowls, we’re about merit, earning success, and acknowledging the realities of the market we live in, so we’re going to welcome anyone who has something to learn, and everyone who wants to share how they’ve learnt. I built my career on that principle, and so we’re hoping that the established tech teams can see the value in it too.”
