On June 28 - July 1 2018, VERY TEMPORARY hosted its inaugural hackathon dubbed T HACKS on site at SOS-HGIC in Tema, Ghana. T HACKS participants included students in both high school and university, with their ages ranging between 17 and 24.

Hackers worked for hours a day on projects intended to contribute to the development of Ghana, and Africa by extension, under the theme ‘Hacking for Development’. The environment at SOS-HGIC over the weekend was filled with palpable enthusiasm, with participants working fervently on a number of projects across fields of Agriculture, Unemployment, and even Nightlife.

To start off the event, our mentors shared their unique perspectives on the potential of technology to ameliorate a majority of Africa’s problems, before guiding participants through the idea generation and development stage in order to allow them form project groups.

Participants aimed to solve problems specifically related to the African region with the assistance of our team of mentors and software developers. Throughout the event, we held open forum discussions with the hackers on the impact of technology on the future of our economies, and discussed ways in which we can prepare ourselves for the upcoming revolution in productivity through machine learning and automation, before encouraging them to employ some of those techniques in their projects.

Participants were treated to Q&A sessions and tech talks with our mentors, and meals to ensure their minds and bodies were well fed.

Members of VERY TEMPORARY’s senior lead team reviewed the final projects under two criteria, Best Social Impact & Best Overall Project.

Although T HACKS was not a competition, winning teams received cash prizes and all participants were awarded with Udacity courses of their choosing to assist in the pursuit of knowledge in their respective fields.

Final T HACKS - June 2018 projects are described below

‘AgroMate’ - Best Social Impact

(Kyle Amoah, Rhys Amoah, Oscar Uwayo, Elvis Okoh-Asifirih, Kwabena Gyapong Osei-Bonsu, Sedo Sezan)

Problem: In Ghana, and other African countries, there is an information gap between metropolitan citizens, and our farmers, who usually live in more remote areas of the country. As a result, we face farming inefficiencies through the low supply of polished data about weather patterns to our farmers who make up roughly 60% of the local population.

AgroMate uses machine learning to predict the level of rainfall in order to improve the lives of farmers. A farmer can input the date, and the the data will be sent to the farmer's phone. This is only a proof of concept of a larger agricultural platform connected through apps from smart phones and USSD (eg. *123*4#) for older phones. This platform will have relevant data provided from different sources, like the rainfall predictor, and will be available to these farmers from the comfort of their phones.

'LAADA’ - Best Overall Project

(Abigail Oppong, Anabel Rose Kubabom, Damon Osei, Allen Kpentey, Louis Murerwa)

Problem: Entrepreneurship in Ghana, and some other African countries, is growing. This means there are more jobs opening up everyday for the population. However there remains an unemployment problem for the many graduates that our improving education system is now producing. This points to an inefficiency in connecting job seekers to jobs available.

LAADA is an African online platform with a beautiful user interface where firms can sign up through a verification and advertise the various jobs, scholarships or other beneficial opportunities they have. Job Seekers (focused at recent graduates and students) who sign up to LAADA will be able to peruse the different opportunities available to them and apply for these jobs, or be picked out by the firm. LAADA may soon study patterns in order to gain the ability to suggest opportunities based on our preferences and resumes. Opportunities that will best benefit the job and seekers.

'Carisma’

(Aaron Bediako, Yoofi Brown-Pobee, Angela Munyao, Emmanuel Annan, Allen Janney)

Problem: In Ghana, cars are sold everywhere, in registered car dealerships, on the side of the road, or even in traffic when "FOR SALE" has been stuck onto the back of a used car. The low level of order in the market has promoted an increase in car related fraud, with buyers being sold stolen or malfunctioning cars. This makes it more difficult for the honest buyers looking to buy cars from honest traders.

Carisma is a website for car enthusiasts and potential buyers to browse new and used cars from traders in their area. Carisma is powered by a database containing verified cars from verified sellers. Cars in this database all register the Vehicle Identification Number (or chassis number) for fraud identification. Carisma also goes further to bless the buyer with a beautiful user interface for browsing the cars, and translates technical features of the car to the average human looking a car (eg. a value like "10 litres per kilometre" is displayed as "Takes you from home to the Accra Mall and back 6 times").

'LiVibe’

(Dennis Donkoh, Salim Roland, Yehowahi Sekan, Gilbert Remy Carrey)

Problem: There is little information about nightlife in Ghana on the internet. Word of mouth is the main way through which locals know where to go and on which days. This excludes tourists, non-locals and other non-regulars from the beautiful nightlife that Accra offers. Furthermore, since economic development includes the freedom and happiness of the people, a better nightlife experience = a better Ghana!

LiVibe is a social media application to determine the hot zones in Accra Nightlife. It uses the locations from people signed up to the application to rank the venues according to the categories that match your vibe. Are you looking to club in the loudest afrobeats nightclub, or would you rather sip on an Aperol Spritz in a quiet jazz lounge? LiVibe's social media feed page also keeps us updated on how the vibe progresses at these Venues.

Our team would like to extend a massive thanks to our sponsors, and we are looking forward to welcoming more brilliant and driven minds at our next hackathon in the very near future.