Hackathon 2025
Using AI to improve quality of life in Kenya
About This Project
What is a Hackathon
A hackathon is an event, where people with tech skills like programmers, designers, and entrepreneurs come together to collaborate intensively on creative projects. The goal is usually to build a working prototype like an app, website, or hardware hack by the end of the event.
Hackathons are normally time bound, often between 1-4 days. They are also theme based whereby the participating teams work on different projects that focus on a particular topic. Many hackathons also include mini workshops where mentors and experts often provide support.
About this Hackathon
The theme of this hackathon is Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve quality of life in Kenya. The idea is to focus on projects that address key challenges like healthcare access, agriculture, education, financial inclusion, infrastructure, and sustainability.
The target participants are mainly college and university students, recent graduates, and young professionals that work in tech. There will be prices for the three best projects and this will be judged by a panel of senior technology professionals
How to participate
Please fill out the following for with a detailed description of your project team and idea. The registration deadline is 20th September 2025.
The following is the timeline for the project:
| Date | Milestone |
| 20/Sep/2025 | Deadline to submit project ideas |
| 29/Sep/2025 | Announce shortlisted project ideas |
| 1/Oct – 27/Oct | Workshops and mentoring: Each team will be delegated a senior tech professional to guide and assist them |
| 27/Oct/2025 | Hackathon date: The hackathon will take place at the Microsoft Garage in Nairobi. |
Example projects
The following are some example project ideas to get you going:
Maternal Health Companion: AI-powered chatbot for pregnant women, providing prenatal advice in Swahili/local languages.
AI Pest & Disease Detector: Farmers upload photos of crops via USSD/SMS, and AI diagnoses issues (e.g., fall armyworm) and proposes solutions.
Monitoring Air Quality: AI-optimized routes for drones to sample quality of air in Nairobi
Plastic Waste Sorter: AI Computer vision to help recyclers classify plastics faster.
Fraud Alert for Mobile Money: AI can be used to identify suspicious trends and report them to the user in real time, e.g. SIM swap scams.
Project Impact
Project Gallery