By Zika Bobby
Cavista Technologies recently hosted its 3rd hackathon competition at the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, bringing together 27 teams of over 100 participants from top Lagos-based universities. Schools represented included Yaba College of Technology, University of Lagos, Lagos State University and Lagos State University of Science and Technology.
The competition provided a veritable platform to help identify tech talents and support them in upscaling and pushing boundaries to create, innovate and provide real life solutions to real life problems.
The event, led by Oyebola Morakinyo, General Manager/Tech Lead at Cavista Technologies, aims to identify and support tech talents in upscaling their skills to create innovative solutions.
In an exclusive interview, Morakinyo shared insights into the inspiration behind the hackathon and Cavista’s vision for empowering Africa’s youths.
What inspired this hackathon?
The hackathon is our flagship programme and we run it every year based on our desire to ensure that we tap into the greatest resources we have in Nigeria, which is our youths. We are passionate about empowering our youths to be able to utilize technology to solve real life problems, catching them young, which is why we do the hackathon every year.
What is your plan to extend this competition to other states?
We have considered going up north to the federal capital, Abuja, and harnessing the youth collateral in that area but for now, we want to keep our footprint in Lagos and then maybe expand to other schools around the Lagos environs like Ogun state. While calling for entries, we had a lot of interests from schools in Ogun. So perhaps next year, we will take them into consideration and expand our scope.
How many teams competed in this event?
We had 27 teams, averaging four persons per team, which is over 100 people who competed. We had over 400 people registered for this event but at the end of the day we had just three teams who won with first, second and third teams, taking home N2 million, N1 million and N500,000 respectively.
What exactly is the objective of hosting this hackathon?
The driving force for Cavista Technologies is empowering youth and creating jobs. We want to transform lives and create opportunities. Our main reason is to help them grow their skills; you heard the Minister of Youth Development Ayodele Olawande Wisdom, at the event talking about one youth, two skills. Secondly, create job opportunities. We are also looking for top talent.
One of the things that drives Cavista Technologies is that we are always looking out for top talent to hire, so in this engagement, we are looking out for the ones who stand out. Even after the hackathon is done, we will continue to engage them and support them to be the best they can be.
Some of the students are return participants as they had competed in previous editions but did not win. We want to empower them and give them opportunities to grow, while we create job opportunities. We also want people to understand the impact that Cavista Technologies is bringing to our communities and our country.
In another five years, where do you see the hackathon happening?
I see the hackathon happening across Africa because we have an office in Botswana, and we hope to extend to Southern Africa with our colleagues in Botswana. We also hope to cover more regions in Nigeria and involve more youths not resident or located in Lagos
Aside from identifying raw talents, how well have you guided these talents in channeling their solutions to solving identifiable problems in society, thereby using technology to our benefits?
We provide tools, mentorship, exposure, networking and more, all of which help us harness the growing power of technology and solve real-life problems in health, agriculture and other areas of the economy where technology will make a difference.
The problem is that results are not usually aggregated, and we do not have a database for those who have benefitted.
Is Cavista Technologies looking to have a database of all these talents you have been aggregating for the past two seasons?
Numbers are our thing, and data analytics is important to us. We are tracking all those who have participated with us. We hired two participants from the winning team last year. We are in technology, so data analytics is important to us. We track all the information we gather and monitor it as we progress. In the next five years or more, we can actually show you a timeline with data, an aggregation of what has been happening and the impact the hackathon has been having on our community as a whole.
I believe this is not about profit and are you taking this event as giving back to our communities. Is there a way you can reach out to other organisations so we can have a robust ecosystem?
We are spreading the word and people have been reaching out to us to see how we can collaborate to make it bigger and better. Working with the Ministers of Youth Development and Arts, Culture, Tourism and The Creative Economy is going to give us enough exposure to showcase what we have been doing. There is an opportunity to collaborate with anyone who is trying to achieve the same goals as we are.
Government seems to operate in silos when it comes to collaboration and having a unified database.
How can you as a private organisation help to curate the database?
One of the things we have done successfully is to create WhatsApp groups for the participants and keep in touch with them even after the hackathon. We also send out surveys and get feedback from them. A lot of planning that went into this year’s event was based on feedback from the last event. There is a constant connection with the engineers and the participants, so the data is readily available.
To be able to galvanize support from all the government parastatals, it shows that Cavista Tech is here for the long haul, and we shall continue to innovate on how we give back to our communities. We are very passionate about what we do.