Capacity development and collaboration for sustainable african agriculture: Amplification of impact through hackathons

Abstract

The paper describes the concept of INSPIRE Kampala virtual hackathons, with the main focus to build and strengthen relationships between several European Union (EU) projects and African communities that started in 2019 with the Nairobi INSPIRE Hackathon. The main focus is exploring a new model for capacity building based on virtual hackathons as an excellent opportunity for bringing together people from different work environments, culture and disciplinary backgrounds. This paper is describing experience and lessons learned from the Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon. INSPIRE Hackathons have evolved over a five year period since it started and during this period we developed a model of fully virtual Hackathons, which we recognise as optimal for Africa. The paper describes all stages of Hackathon building: definition of themes, selection of mentors, development, webinars as tools for sharing experience, final presentation, selection of winners and awarding ceremony. As important we consider also planning other actions, because we don’t see INSPIRE Hackathon as an event, but as a continuous process. Demonstration part of paper describes the lessons learnt from the winning challenge: Desert Locus Monitoring. The description of all phases demonstrate Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon approach. On the basis of experience we defined strategy for the future, how to continue and successfully extend such a model in Africa.