| Hana Kubickova
Taking into account the coronavirus outbreak that has created an unpredictable and unprecedented situation for everyone, we decided to make Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon 2020 a fully virtual event to minimize the need of any travel. This means the cancellation of in-situ part of the hackathon at Makerere University in Kampala and the final presentation of results during IST Africa conference.
Nevertheless, we don’t want to deprive you of this unique opportunity of cooperating with African and European experts and therefore we have no plans to cancel the Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon 2020 itself – the hackathon continues to run remotely until May 2020 and after that, there would be a final online workshop/webinar, where the results of the hackathon would be presented.
You can also look forward to certificates attesting to your participation in the Kampala Hackathon, which will be sent via email in case of cancellation of in-situ part.
The IST-Africa 2020 conference, supported by the European Commission (EC) and the African Union Commission (AUC), addresses a series of societal challenges.
The Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon 2020 is a contribution to the joint efforts to solve these challenges. The hackathon addresses some of the key topics identified by the IST-Africa conference, such as agriculture, environmental sustainability, collaborative open innovation and ICT-enabled entrepreneurship.
The Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon 2020 is one of the satellite INSPIRE hackathons. The hackathon is organised in the frame of the IST Africa 2020 Conference. The hackathon is a collaborative event organised by Plan4all, Club of Ossiach associations, GODAN, FAO, IST-Africa Conference, Makerere University, AfriGEO and EU projects including EO4Agri, STARGATE, RDA Europe 4.0, SIEUSOIL, DEMETER, SmartAgriHubs, NextGEOSS, EUXDAT, PoliVisu and AFarCloud.
GOAL
The goal of the Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon 2020 is to continue to build and strengthen relationships between several EU projects and African communities that started in 2019 with the Nairobi INSPIRE hackathon. This was one of our most successful hackathons with more than 200 participants representing 26 African countries. The INSPIRE hackathons are not a competition, rather the main focus is building relationships, making rapid developments, and collecting ideas for future research and innovation.
DATES
The hackathon starts on March 2020 by creating hackathon teams addressing pre-defined challenges. The hackathon will then run remotely until an onsite hackathon at the University of Makerere, Kampala 4. – 5. May 2020. The final phase is on 8. May 2020 9 am in Kampala where the hackathon results will be presented within a workshop at IST Africa.
VENUE
The hackathon consists of the following phases and components:
1) a virtual period: The teams will work virtually led by the team mentors. Membership and participation in this part is open to all. There will be educational webinars during the virtual hackathon to facilitate the progress/collaboration.
2) a series of webinars covering topics relevant to the challenges, information about the challenges and the INSPIRE hackathon itself
3) on site hackathon (attendance optional) The University of Makerere in Kampala is hosting 2 days hackathon (4 – 5 May) where the teams can continue the work done in the virtual period.
4) a workshop (attendance optional for team members/participants) which is the closing event of the hackathon where the results of the hackathon will be presented. The workshop will take place in Venue TBD, Kampala. For more details, please visit the IST Africa website.
TEAMS & MENTORS
The Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon 2020 is organised using an unconventional approach, tailored to cater for cross-continental collaboration.
The hackathon starts with a set of predefined challenges. Each project has a mentor (see the list of projects and mentors below). The participants of the hackathon can choose to work on any of the predefined projects. In this way, teams will be built to collaborate on the projects.
The mentors will organise the work and are responsible for the communication in the project teams and will act as team leaders.
The projects and their mentors for the Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon 2020 include following challenges:
1. Transportation related aspects of Urban Planning - use case of Kampala (mentors: Stephen Kalyesubula, Tuula Löytty, Daniel Beran and Karel Jedlička)
2. SmartAfriHub – Agriculture Digital Innovation Hub for Africa (mentors: Jiří Kvapil, Emmanuel Okalany, Maureen Agena, David Martin Amitu, Francis Otto and Jacob Kato from Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) based at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, Petr Uhlir, Tuula Löytty, Dimitrij Kozuch, Filip Leitner, Jan Vrobel)
3. Open Land Use for Africa (OLU4Africa) (mentor: Dmitrij Kozuch)
4. Desert Locust (mentors: Paul Kasoma, Kizito Odhiambo, Lilian Ndungu)
5. IoT Technologies for Africa (mentors: Michal Kepka and Joel Muhanguzi)
6. Climate Change Trends for Africa (mentors: Pavel Hájek, Jiří Valeš, Karel Jedlička, Samuel Ekwacu)
7. EO4Agri Challenge (mentors: Karel Charvát, Jiri Kvapil, Dmitrij Kozuch, Hana Kubickova, Jan Chytry, Lilian Ndungu)
8. Text Mining and Metadata (mentors: Karel Charvat, Michal Kepka, Karel Panek, Marek Splichal and Stepan Kafka)
9. Ethical and legal aspects of open data affecting farmers (mentors: Foteini Zampati, Alice Namuli, Chris Addison)
CAPACITY BUILDING
An important component of the INSPIRE hackathon concept is the capacity building activities. It is provided in webinars organized by each of the challenges. In addition to a short introduction to the INSPIRE hackathon concept and the specific challenge, experts are invited to speak about topics covered within the challenge. This way transfer of knowledge (often across disciplines) go side by side with efficient management of the challenge work. The webinars will be announced within a couple of weeks after the hackathon is kicked-off.
TIMELINE
- March 2020 – start of the hackathon, registration opens
- (Beginning of April TBC) – a series of webinars introducing the teams and their progress. There are educational elements in these webinars.
- On site hackathon at University of Makerere, Kampala, Uganda
- 1-7 May 2020 – preparing presentations for the workshop in Kampala
- 8 May 2020 – presentation of the hackathon results at the workshop in Kampala
REGISTRATION
In order to participate in the hackathon, please REGISTER HERE
You can join the teams mentioned above at any time between now and May 2020. The registration is open to anyone from anywhere in the world as most of the hackathon is done virtually.
FEE
Participating in the Kampala INSPIRE hackathon is free of charge!