TechPearl Malawi recently held its Hackathon-24. Over 30 young female techies from the University of Malawi, Malawi University of Science and Technology, Don Bosco Technical College, Lilongwe Technical College, Shareworld and others pitched mobile, web and hardware solutions. The hackathon was held over a couple of days at the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre in Lilongwe.
I was one of the hackathon judges and can say without contradiction that Malawi is not short of talent! A number of solutions including health, class registration and sanitation apps were conceptualised and developed.
The winning team #EcoChampions, which developed a trashcan monitoring solution, walked away with K1 million while two other teams got K600,000 and K400,000 each.
A big shoutout to Elizabeth Kalitsiro Mwale for pioneering this initiative and her team, who made the event possible. I look back at when TechPearl started and am happy to see how it is growing. As one of the hackathon sponsors, Jane Kaponda Nthakomwa of ICTC Limited said, “Anything big starts small!”
