Hackathons with rapid innovative ideas and designs are solving Africa’s problems.

I prefer to call them random hacks of kindness. Hackathons are events where a group of so called Geeks mainly developers, designers and programmers come together at a specified venue and work together in teams to collaborate on projects. Hackathon organizers will introduce problems to be solved related to the theme of that hackathon.

The theme of the may range from:

• HACK4WATER
• Digitally connected city
• African Utility Week
• Mobile booking system for patients of government hospitals

Usually the attending geeks will be briefed of problems at hand on arrival and then allowed to select problem that best interest them. Geeks will then form groups based on their skills set in order to come up with a solution or idea to solve the given problem. Some people attend hackathons to learn new skills from others in a team.

Hackathons usually would take place over a weekend, with the common Hackathons beginning on a Friday afternoon until Saturday and some ending on Sunday late. Geeks have only a few hours to come up with a rapid innovative idea or solution. Solutions are then presented and demonstrated to the panel of expert judges in that field of the theme. Most of the hackathons organizers will provide prizes or cash awards to the team or teams that provide the best solution to the problem or who have come up with the best overall idea. Hence hackathon organizers prefer not to send out or advertise the problems to be solved under that theme in order to avoid attendees from preparing or designing a prototype prior to the event which will put them at an unfair advantage.

In South Africa there is a growing trend of hackathons and are becoming increasingly popular with big companies like FNB bank, Santam insurance, municipalities like Johannesburg - Jozi and even tertiary institutions showing interest to organize, sponsor and being involved. The Cortex Hub has announced South Africa's first 72-hour women's hackathon and technology conference called Women Hackers Unite Hackathon offering a prize money of R150 000. Here are some of the hackathons which took place.

Over the weekend I participated in the City of Ekurhuleni A Digitally Connected City challenge.. There were 37 teams mainly young geeks participating to solve problems with the municipality:

• Department Works
• Intelligent Analytics for the city
• Human Settlement Application monitor
• Responsive Cities Challenge
• Cloning of existing Smart solutions
• Expansion of LEAP App

I choose Intelligent Analytics for the city ,which I focused on saving water to combat water scarcity and water leakages.

“A smart water network, integrated with set of pressure and water-flow sensors to enable municipalities and customers to remotely and continuously monitor, prioritize and manage maintenance issues by using data collected to diagnose problems of the water distribution network, water leakages and wrongful billing.”

I used an Internet of Things devices and sensors to monitor water usage in real time with a mobile/web app No-Drop which can be used by every house hold. Presentation can be downloaded here.

And the first prize winner went to:

Father and daughter, Pule and Naledi Phafane from the Open Robot team are the overall winners! They walked away with R100 000 (about $7 363) for developing an Application that frees traffic congestion by controlling how long traffic lights remain open by controlling the robots with their mobile devices.