Providing a launchpad for home-grown development and youth entrepreneurship has become pertinent, given South Africa’s adopted stance to bolster the innovation ecosystem.
So said small business development minister Stella Tembisa Ndabeni, delivering an address at the Huawei Developer Competition Code4Mzansi final event.
The programme was launched in partnership with Ndabeni’s Department of Small Business Development and several local universities. It brings together developers, start-ups and student teams to create practical solutions that tackle real-world problems using cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
It also forms part of a broader global Huawei Cloud developer competition and is designed to empower micro, small and medium enterprises and young people.
The South African leg of the competition marked the inaugural edition in the country, with Huawei South Africa hosting the final pitch day and announcing the local winners last week.
Speaking at the event, Ndabeni said: “When we took a conscious decision to partner with Huawei [South Africa] on the Code4Mzansi initiative in 2025. Our ambition was not about the competition only but about igniting a new generation of digitally-enabled entrepreneurs who can solve real problems the country faces.
“This is to help create sustainable enterprises and help reposition South Africa for inclusive growth. We need to equip entrepreneurs to participate meaningfully, in a modern, technology-driven economy.”
Steven Chen, CEO of Huawei Cloud South Africa, lauded the quality of the finalists’ solutions, saying they demonstrate the potential of local innovation to respond to real market needs.
“South Africa has talent and ambition, and young people in this country are ready to build. We believe local innovation can create global impact, and cloud technology gives builders the infrastructure to grow ideas into solutions that can scale.”
“Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, and technology is their greatest accelerator,” added professor Thokozani Shongwe, vice-dean of post-graduate studies, research and internationalisation at the University of Johannesburg’s faculty of engineering and the built environment.
“The participants are future entrepreneurs who will drive South Africa’s digital economy forward.
“This competition is a demonstration of how young innovators are applying technical knowledge to real economic challenges.”
After attracting 1 041 participants in South Africa, forming 353 teams, 20 semi-finalists were selected before the top nine teams advanced to the final of the developer programme.
They were required to deliver 10-minute in-person presentations to a panel of judges.
The selected finalists focused on everyday solutions like township retail, healthcare, energy, agriculture, payments and the creative economy.
Four of the finalist teams focused on the township economy. Their solutions included food safety verification for spaza shops, offline point-of-sale systems built to operate during load-shedding, WhatsApp-native marketplaces for informal retailers, and community credit systems designed for social grant recipients.
The other finalist teams addressed AI-driven healthcare access, real-time detection of electricity theft, cloud-connected smart agriculture, financial infrastructure for the creator economy, and AI-generated African music.
The finalists also competed for a total prize pool of just under R1 million.
MAAT by SIMVAK was named the overall winner and received the business value award, taking home R300 000.
SIMVAK is a platform that addresses food safety and regulatory compliance in South Africa’s informal retail sector through AI agents, real-time product recall alerts and counterfeit detection, all built specifically for the spaza shop ecosystem.
“The spaza network is the supply chain for most South African households,” said SIMVAK founder Shingirayi Mandebvu.
HealthHive by FTCK was named as a runner-up in the business value award category, winning R200 000.
HealthHive has developed an AI telemedicine platform, which matches patients with the right medical practitioners based on their symptoms before consultation. Its aim is to help users move from symptom checking to appointment booking and healthcare access more efficiently.
Auraa received the innovation award for its AI music engine built to generate and represent authentic African sound. The platform has already been associated with an album that has crossed one million streams. Auraa received a R100 000 prize.
The future star award was presented to e-Khadi, a community credit and stokvel platform that gives social grant recipients access to essentials at their local spaza shops and is supported by AI-assisted credit scoring and fraud detection. She also received a R100 000 prize.
e-Khadi is founded by Fanelesibonge Mbuyazi, software engineer at Sanlam Fintech.
Mbuyazi was recently named winner of 2026 Rising Star in Coding and Software Development Award at the third annual Wired4Women Awards. The award recognises young professionals demonstrating strong technical growth, coding excellence and early leadership in software engineering.
The people’s choice award, which was determined by public vote on Huawei’s social media channels, was awarded to DevRift, a semi-finalist in the competition, who took home R100 000.
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