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Freshman students scoop top prize at blockchain hack

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 29 Jul 2022
The Hackchain winning team with Ronny Mabokela of UJ (fourth from right), Gideon Greaves of CV Labs Africa (centre), Lucky Litelu, (third from right) Brenton Naicker of CV Labs (second from right) and Chloe Sanham of Polygon (sixth from right).
The Hackchain winning team with Ronny Mabokela of UJ (fourth from right), Gideon Greaves of CV Labs Africa (centre), Lucky Litelu, (third from right) Brenton Naicker of CV Labs (second from right) and Chloe Sanham of Polygon (sixth from right).

Freshman year students at the University of Johannesburg scooped the top prize at the inaugural three-day hackathon hosted byCV Labs Africa together with the university.

The winning team, Hackchain, comprising of first-year business information technology students, came out tops from a pool of 19 qualifying teams.The hackathon was also supported by QuidPro, Binance, Polygon and Geekulcha.

For the challenge, the UJ Innovation Hackathon tasked participants to create digital solutions driven by blockchain technology, to increase the accessibility and inclusivity of healthcare, digital finance, fundraising, education and food sharing.

The Hackchain team was rewarded for a healthcare solution focusing on disease screening.

The team received incubation consulting services to prepare them for CV Labs Africa’s three-month incubation programme. Other prizes included graphic design resources, grant application consulting to Polygon Village, and trading capital from Binance.

"Hackathons are an exchange of creativity, growth and ingenuity between different skill sets. This was evident in abundance throughout the three days at UJ,” says Binance’s Douglas Webster.

“We have witnessed many global hackathons, but this one was special to us as it proved there is an abundance of deep commitment and determination to succeed unlike anywhere else right now.”

The UJ’s Technopreneurship Centre, which hosted the event, honoured the winners and other participants, urging them to embrace new technologies.

Ronny Mabokela, head of the Technopreneurship Centre at UJ, comments: “The Technopreneurship Centre is an ideation and innovation hub where industries’ most pressing unresolved challenges can be addressed, researched and solved by our students, with support from exceptional academics in collaboration with industry partners, such as CV Labs Africa, Geekulcha and those who sponsored the blockchain innovation hackathon.

“Over the three days, we observed the enablement of our students’ entrepreneurial mindset and what amazing solutions they have innovated when embracing new-age technologies such as blockchain."

Michael Jordan of Polygon says: “Hackathon is a portmanteau that combines the words hack and marathon. The ‘hack’ in hackathon means a clever way of doing something in a better way rather than the often scary connotation of hack/breaking in. Ironically, most hackathons are often where developers devise ways to prevent unauthorised computer or data access.

“Over the past days, we have witnessed the power of humans to code in a way that will transform not just the security of data but the core of how data valuation and validation can create endless solutions to old-world problems of mistrust.”

Gideon Greaves, MD of CV VC Africa and CV Labs Africa, committed to encourage creativity and ambition to drive South Africa's blockchain technological capabilities to bring about a positive impact.

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