Call for Proposals: UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking Women Hackathon 2025

Submit proposals for the UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking Women Hackathon 2025. UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking is looking for 45 passionate young women developers, (organised in teams of three) from Eastern and Southern Africa to participate in their 3rd Annual Women’s Hackathon. The hackathon seeks to address the gap in innovations supporting climate change adaptation and mitigation, and the gender gap in software development in Africa. These are software applications.

Theme: Innovate for climate change adaptation and mitigation

Approach

The hackathon programme shall be in two parts. The first part of the programme shall be conducted virtually where the 15, 3-person teams, competitively selected, shall be guided by academic and industrial experts to develop innovative digital proof-of-concepts solutions tackling climate change mitigation and adaptation challenges. Webinars on topical issues shall also be mounted to impart relevant skills and build confidence among the future women technology leaders. The developed solutions shall provide the teams with innovative proof-of-concepts for them see seek funding for further development and commercialisation. At the end of the virtual programme, the teams shall pitch their solutions.

The top three teams shall be invited to participate in an in-person 3-day hackathon, as a pre-event to the UbuntuNet Connect Conference 2025 in Harare, Zimbabwe in October. The teams shall present their refined concepts as part of the conference programme, where winners shall be announced and feted.

The in-person UbuntuNet Alliance Women Hackathon shall be held on October 27-29, 2025, with all participants also attending the UbuntuNet Connect Conference (October 30-31, 2025) under the theme “Resilient and Sustainable Research and Education Networks for the Future.”

Benefits of UbuntuNet Alliance

Participants will get the following benefits:

• Certificates of participation for all participants
• Travel and accommodation costs fully covered
• Opportunity to attend the UbuntuNet-Connect 2025 conference in Zimbabwe
• Possibility of internship opportunities with the UbuntuNet Alliance NRENs
• Linkage to the industry
• Opportunity for Mentorship

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Eligibility for UbuntuNet Alliance

• Open to female participants.
• Pursing or in possession of a university degree in Software Engineering, Information Technology, Information Systems, Computer Science, or any related field.
• Participants should be students or recent graduates of not more than 5 years.
• Must be from and residing in one of the following countries in the UbuntuNet Alliance Region: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Comoros, Congo, DR Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
• Must not have participated in a previous UbuntuNet Alliance women hackathon.

Selection Criteria

The concepts will be assessed based on the following criteria:

• Proposed idea solves a problem and fits within the theme.
• The idea being proposed is innovative.
• The team has necessary programming skills to implement the proposed idea.
• Feasibility of the proposed idea.

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Application

They invite concept proposals from teams from eligible countries. The concept note should be 3-5 pages [font Times New Roman, size 12, single spacing], excluding the cover page. It should ideally contain an introduction, a background (or relevance), proposed objectives (leading to development of an ICT solution), methodology (that is based on the software development lifecycle and contains necessary technologies), programming skills of team members, previous experience, links to developed work, education level, year of graduation (past or future). The cover page should have the topic and team member details (names and email address, phone number).

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