Africa's Talking Open Hackathon: Health-tech Solutions is a dynamic event designed to unite developers, healthcare professionals, and innovators. The hackathon encourages the creation of scalable, technology-driven solutions to pressing health challenges by leveraging Africa’s Talking APIs.

Objectives:

• Foster cross-industry collaboration and innovation.
• Enable participants to create robust health-tech solutions that improve healthcare delivery.
• Showcase the power of Africa’s Talking communication APIs in solving real-world problems.

Challenges:
Participants will tackle real-world health challenges by integrating and utilizing a suite of Africa’s Talking APIs: including SMS, USSD, Voice, Airtime, and Insights into practical solutions. Teams will work on end-to-end projects, from coding and version control to deployment via automated CI/CD pipelines.

1. Last-Mile Patient Communication

Challenge: Reaching patients in remote areas for appointment reminders, medication schedules, or health alerts.

Solutions:

• SMS API for reliable delivery of messages.
• Voice API for automated calls in local languages.
• USSD API for two-way communication on basic phones.

2. Health Service Accessibility and Navigation

Challenge: Many citizens struggle to locate nearby health facilities or services.

Solutions:

• USSD API to build a lightweight, offline-accessible health locator or triage tool.
• SMS API to send back facility details or service info.

3. Patient Feedback & Monitoring

Challenge: Clinics lack structured, real-time patient feedback on service delivery or symptom tracking.

Solutions:

• USSD + SMS APIs for surveys, check-ins, or reporting symptoms post-visit.
• Airtime API to incentivize feedback with airtime rewards.

4. Emergency Response Coordination

Challenge: Inconsistent and delayed coordination during medical emergencies.

Solution:

• Voice API for instant dispatch calls to ambulance teams.
• SMS API for alerts and instructions to patients or responders.

5. Maternal & Child Health Tracking

Challenge: Missed vaccinations, checkups, or prenatal milestones.

Solutions:

• SMS API for scheduled reminders.
• USSD API for mobile registration of pregnancies and tracking growth stages.

6. Medical Stock and Supply Chain Alerts

Challenge: Clinics often experience stockouts of essential drugs or equipment without warning.

Solutions:

• SMS API to notify health workers of low stock levels.
• USSD API for stock reporting from rural clinics in real time.

7. Health Education & Myth Busting

Challenge: Widespread misinformation around diseases, treatments, and vaccines.

Solutions:

• SMS and Voice APIs to deliver verified health tips and debunk myths.
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR) for accessible education content.

Objectives

• Accelerate digital health innovation using simplified telco infrastructure.
• Foster interdisciplinary collaboration between developers and health-sector stakeholders.
• Equip developers with tools to build health-tech solutions using SMS, USSD, Voice, Airtime, and Insights.
• Encourage innovation in Fintech as a complementary enabler in health services (insurance, micro-payments, billing, etc.).
• Provide visibility, mentorship, and monetization opportunities to talented developers.

Target Audience

• Software developers (beginner to advanced)
• Tech startups in health and fintech
• UX designers and product developers
• Public and private healthcare professionals
• NGOs, civic tech leaders, and digital health policy stakeholders
• CS and Engineering Students, hackathon enthusiasts, and innovation labs

Challenges

• Appointment booking via USSD
• Health alerts and appointment reminders via SMS or Voice
• Mobile micro-health insurance payments
• Access-to-care mapping tools
• Remote diagnosis or triage bots using airtime or mobile billing
• Health worker coordination or training apps

New to Africa's Talking? Get started here.

Developer Documentation (We welcome feedback)

THEME: Health Tech

The winning solution will receive cash prizes as follows:(This will be revised time to time)

• Winner - $100
• 1st Runners Up - $50
• 2nd Runners Up - $25

Africa's Talking powers communications solutions across Africa with simplified access to telco infrastructure, developers use our powerful SMS, USSD, Voice, Airtime, and Payments APIs to bring their ideas to life, as they build and sustain scalable businesses.

Agenda:

1. Warm-Up

• Introductions
• Form teams where need be.
• Feedback
• Feature requests

2. Building/hacking: Code in GitHub/GitLab/BitBucket and deploy in Docker/Automated CI/Travis CI/Bamboo

Note: This section needs additional setup.

Upon commit, the repository is built and deployed to an accessible web server or an S3 bucket.

Technology used.

3. Demonstration and Wrap-up

• Opportunities:
• Network
• Innovate
• Access to our Talent bench (You can get a job or a gig on the spot)

Submit your Idea:

Hackathon idea submission form (This form should be filled by all hackathon attendees planning to present it will be used to reach out to them later)

Gigs:

We would love to reach out to you so that you can build for our customers, please fill out this form with details to ensure we have your details:

GIG/HACK DEVELOPER PORTFOLIO FORM (Anyone open to take Gigs should fill this form and it can be shared with developer attendees of AT events)

Join community channels:

Slack:

• Join Africa's Talking slack community here

Please follow us on Twitter handles to:

• @AfricasTalking
• @ATCommunityNBO

You can get our videos, recaps, and event interviews on our youtube channels, subscribe to get updates:

• Africa's Talking Youtube Channel
• Elarian Youtube Channel

Africa's Talking community allows developers to learn skills for the modern-day African Developer. We are language and framework agnostic. All developers are welcome. This is where Africa's Talking developers community meets to build, learn and exchange knowledge.

We are helping software developers and businesses to bring their ideas to life through easy-to-use APIs quickly.

Would you like to partner with us? Kindly contact the Developer Experience Team.