Dharmendra Pradhan to inaugurate UNESCO India Africa Hackathon on Nov 22

New Delhi [India], November 16 : The Ministry of Education, Ministry of External Affairs, UNESCO and AICTE will jointly organize a four-day UNESCO India Africa Hackathon starting November 21 at Gautam Buddha University in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan will inaugurate the Hackathon on November 22.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be the Chief Guest for the prize distribution ceremony on the last day, Professor M Jagadesh Kumar, Chairman of AICTE told ANI.
Several senior ministers from the participating African nations have already confirmed their presence.
The Chairman AICTE further told ANI, "Events like UNESCO India Africa Hackathon help us in encouraging professional creativity and self-expression using the latest technology. When divergent minds work together, innovations happen. This Hackathon aims to serve as a symbol of the bond cherished by India and its African counterparts and embody the spirit of collaboration - bringing them together to find solutions to the challenges faced by human societies and pave the way for a better tomorrow."
The main objectives of the Hackathon include exploring new technologies or skills, creating potential, driving business innovation, sourcing incubation programs, creating potential start-ups, branding, creating solutions for social causes and analysing data to make predictions.
The one of its kind UNESCO India Africa Hackathon will be a 36 hours non-stop event that will start at 8:00 am on November 23 and go on till 8:00 pm the next day.
"Under the central theme LiFE; the five sub-themes chosen for the UIAH 2022 are- Education, Renewable Energy/Sustainability, Drinking water & Sanitation, Agriculture and Health & Hygiene. 603 participants from 22 African nations and the host country India will be working to provide solutions to the problems in these 5 areas of concern.100 teams, with each team being a mix of African and Indian participants, will be working out solutions for a total of 20 problem statements," he said.
M Jagadesh Kumar further said that solutions like getting soil health intelligence through a smartphone image-based soil testing facility, innovative methods to improve delivery and learning outcomes for specially-abled children, decision support tool for electric vehicle adoption, and image processing software for identifying tumours in MRI image can be some of the outcomes of the meet.
It will bring together students, educators, teachers and the research community of India and its African partners to tackle the common challenges faced by their countries and serve as a facilitator for cultural amalgamation.
The participating African countries are - Botswana, Cameroon, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Sierra-Leone, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Abhay Jere, Chief Innovation Officer, of the Ministry of Education's Innovation Cell said: "Our annual initiative Smart India Hackathon has captured the imagination of young minds and has kickstarted the culture of Hackathons in India. Last year, we successfully organized India-ASEAN Hackathon and now with UIA hackathon, we aim to broaden our collaborations"
"Now India has a deep understanding of developing innovation and startup ecosystem and we can certainly partner with African educational institutions in building their support system for promoting innovation and entrepreneurship," Jere added.