Are you a tech Innovator? Do you Love Data? Register for Season 2 of DataHack4fi

Are you a tech Innovator? Do you Love Data? Register for Season 2 of DataHack4fi

We’re happy to announce that Season 2 of DataHack4FI is now open for registrations! DataHack4FI is Africa’s only competition that encourages finance, tech and data enthusiasts to collaborate in using data and analytics to solve business challenges and extend financial services to underserved communities. So if you’re a tech innovator or simply love data then we reccommend you keep reading…

What is DataHack4fi?

For the ones in the dark of this amazing initiative, The Insight2Impact Facility at FinMark Trust (FMT) in collaboration with Cenfri established an initiative that brings together data specialists (analysts and software developers) and financial service providers (FSPs) to leverage tools and technologies for crowdsourcing data-driven solutions to real-world problems! How Awesome is that!

The insight2impact Facility is championing Africa’s first ever Data innovation competition aimed at joining data scientists, researchers, business and government leaders in 6 focus countries to dig deep into the biggest data challenges and to showcase breakthroughs, latest discoveries and methodologies.

The competition will promote and demonstrate the use and analysis of data (big data, small data, alternative data and new data trends) to FSPs, which will ultimately serve the financially excluded customer through innovative data analytics. We are all about initiatives that aim to support young innovative minds across Africa, and provide a platform for them to learn the art of engaging and storytelling their initiatives.

The first edition of the Datahack4fi was concluded on 9 May 2017 in Kigali during the Transform Africa Summit. With more than 126 teams partaking in the final round of the country competitions, mentoring and coaching sessions were offered to build capacity amongst all country finalists through Masterclass sessions offered by the i2i team and its in-country partners. At the same time, i2i sought to create communities of innovation through data by bringing together FSPs, development partners, innovation hubs and fintechs, thereby providing a platform to share data challenges and solutions.

What can we expect of Season 2?

Season 2 is expected to promote the use of data in designing and delivering valuable financial services, bridge the data gap, connect FSPs with Fintech’s and strengthen the community of partnerships (Innovation hubs, FinTechs, FSPs and Market Development Facilitators) created in the past season.

DataHack4FI Season 2 won’t follow a traditional hackathon format. Instead of informal teams being presented with the same set of data to analyse, this year we are encouraging existing tech companies to take a fresh look at the data they are already collected. They plan to accomplish this by building on and showcasing the innovations from various Fintechs and collaborating them with a data expert.

There are six country-level competitions, and entrants must reside in one of these countries. The winning team in each country will be invited to pitch their solution at the 2018 DataHack4FI competition finals in Rwanda. What’s more the winning solution will be awarded US$ 25,000!

Do I qualify?

You’re eligible to enter the competition if you’re from Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda or Zambia and either:

Tech innovators
Existing companies that have already launched a product, have customers and are collecting data. The companies should either have an employee/team member that is capable of doing data analysis or they should be willing to work with a data scientist fellow. The company should have an interest in exploring solutions related to financial inclusion.

Data science fellows
These data enthusiasts should either have a relevant qualification (e.g. programming, statistics, maths, etc) or some experience in data analytics or data science. The fellows will be mentored by more experienced data scientists. Applicants should be willing to partner with a tech innovator for the duration of the competition to analyse its data and develop a solution.

Solutions will be scored on a number of factors, including whether it:

• Addresses financial inclusion challenges in Africa
• Demonstrates how data and analytics were used
• Shows how customers would benefit from using it
• Has been developed in a way that enabled capacity building for young people involved in the process
• Ideally benefits women and/or youth (this is not mandatory)

Let’s be honest, you’ve got to register!  For more information on the competition and the rules of entry, visit their site here.

Are you looking for other amazing events to attend? Check out the events that we have lined up for you here.