AFRICAN YOUTH ANTI-CORRUPTION HACKATHON 2021

The first edition of the Coding4Integrity hackathon series, organised in 2021 for young coders from Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa, represents one outstanding example of how to leverage distance learning, digital innovation and social entrepreneurship to meaningfully engage youth whilst empowering them in coming up with their own innovative and creative solutions.

More than 1,900 developers from the five African countries applied to take part in the hackathon – a figure highlighting both the breadth of expertise in the ICT space as well as young people’s interest in offering solutions to tackle the scourge of corruption – and 193 were admitted to the four weeks hackathon programme, comprised of training, mentoring and tech development components.

The hackathon offered young developers the chance to come up with their own ideas on how to counter corruption through technology. It was designed to encourage solutions around a series of thematic areas, including transparency in public administration, transparency in public procurement and the administration of public finances, safe and reliable reporting of corruption, and financial investigations. Each of the 65 teams chose a single thematic area and developed their ideas within one of three hackathon tracks, namely Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain Dapp Development, or Web2 Development.

One Team per each participating country was selected by an expert judge panel as winner and awarded financial support to further develop the winning tech solution, and in-kind contribution, to receive national and international exposure (e.g. in the margins of the ninth session of the Conference of the States Parties to the UN Convention against Corruption in December 2021 and the fourth edition of the World Youth Forum in January 2022, both held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt).

The winning tech solutions are the following:

Team VALORO (Egypt) – Solution to financial investigations. DEMO

Team ENIGMA (Kenya) – Solution to financial investigation and safe reliable reporting of corruption. DEMO

Team STEM (Nigeria) – Solution to transparency in public administration. DEMO

Team FISK (Senegal) – Solution to safe and reliable reporting of corruption. DEMO

Team BLOCKCHAIN BULLS (South Africa) – Solution to transparency in public procurement and the administration of public finances. DEMO

GALLERY

Hackathon winners present at the GRACE launch event in the margins of the ninth session of the Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, held in Egypt in December 2021. © UNODC
Hackathon winners presenting their ideas, experiences and suggestions on how to meaningfully engage youth in anti-corruption efforts, through the use of ICT-based activities such as hackathons. © UNODC
Hackathon winners with Ms. Lulua Asaad, Coordinator of the GRACE initiative. © UNODC
Hackathon winners meeting Ms. Ghada Waly, Executive Director of UNODC. © UNODC
Hackathon winners talking about the possibilities offered by digital innovation for youth to join the fight against corruption and to promote the SDGs, to bystanders at the fourth edition of the World Youth Forum, held in Egypt in January 2022. © UNODC
Mr. Leonardo Paradiso, GRACE Team, and representatives of Save the Children Egypt, presenting Team STEM, Nigerian Hackathon winners, to the audience of the UNODC workshop to the World Youth Forum. © UNODC
Mr. Leonardo Paradiso, GRACE Team, and Team STEM interviewed by national television on the role of education, youth empowerment and digital innovation to shape the new generation of Guardians of Integrity. © UNODC
Team STEM meeting Ms. Ghada Waly, Executive Director of UNODC. In the picture also Ms. Cristina Albertin and Ms. Mirna Bouhabib, Regional Representative and Deputy Regional Representative of the UNODC Office for the Middle East and North Africa (ROMENA), respectively. © UNODC