The Political Solutions Hackathon is a groundbreaking event focused on transforming how Africans engage with democratic processes, governance, and civic participation through technology. In a continent where political systems face unique challenges—from voter disenfranchisement to lack of transparency, misinformation, and limited citizen-government engagement—this hackathon invites developers, designers, data scientists, and civic entrepreneurs to create practical and scalable solutions that work seamlessly for the African political landscape.

With access to cutting-edge tools, APIs, and mentorship, participants will innovate across key areas of governance and civic technology—delivering real-world solutions that are impactful, inclusive, and transformative.




Addressable Problems in Politics Solutions

• Voter Registration & Electoral Platforms: Develop digital voter registration systems, polling station locators, and civic ID verification tools integrated with national databases.

• Civic Education & Political Awareness: Create platforms that educate citizens on their rights, electoral processes, candidate manifestos, and constitutional provisions.

• Election Monitoring & Transparency: Build tools for real-time election observation, result tallying, anomaly detection, and voter turnout analytics.

• Anti-Corruption & Accountability Systems: Design platforms for tracking public expenditure, reporting corruption, monitoring government procurement, and public official accountability.

• Petition & Public Participation Platforms: Enable digital petitions, public consultations, opinion polling, and direct citizen engagement with legislators and local authorities.

• Political Campaign & Candidate Management: Build tools for campaign management, volunteer coordination, donation tracking, and voter outreach for political candidates and parties.

• Misinformation & Fact-Checking Tools: Create AI-driven platforms for detecting political misinformation, verifying news, and rating the credibility of political claims and media sources.

• Government Services & e-Governance: Develop citizen-facing government service portals, digital document processing, tax compliance tools, and open government data platforms.

• Legislative Tracking & Policy Monitoring: Build systems for tracking bills, parliamentary votes, legislative agendas, and policy implementation at national and county levels.

• Conflict Resolution & Peacebuilding Tech: Design platforms for early warning systems, community dialogue facilitation, post-election reconciliation, and political violence mapping.

• Local Government & Devolution Solutions: Create tools that improve service delivery, budget transparency, and citizen participation at county and ward levels.

• Youth & Marginalized Groups Political Inclusion: Build solutions that amplify youth voices, enable women's political participation, and ensure accessibility for persons with disabilities in civic engagement.

Objectives

• Bridge the Civic Technology Gap: Create solutions that improve accessibility and efficiency of political participation and governance.

• Foster Local Innovation: Empower African innovators to solve Africa's unique democratic and governance challenges.

• Promote Democratic Inclusion: Build solutions that enable seamless civic engagement and access to political processes for all citizens.

• Encourage Responsible Development: Prioritize transparency, data privacy, and ethical political technology practices.

• Enable Impact at Scale: Ensure solutions can grow to benefit thousands of citizens, civic organizations, and government institutions across Africa.

Target Attendees

• Developers & Engineers: With experience in mobile/web development, APIs, or scalable civic platforms.

• Civic Tech Professionals: Practitioners who understand real challenges in governance, elections, and public administration.

• AI/ML & Data Scientists: Experts building analytics, misinformation detection, and predictive governance models.

• Students & Learners: With a passion for technology and democratic innovation.

• Social Entrepreneurs & NGOs: Focused on impactful civic access and government accountability solutions.

• UX/UI Designers: To reimagine digital democracy and citizen engagement experiences.

• Policy Experts & Government Officials: Bringing sector-specific insights on governance and public administration.

Why Participate?

• Access to Tools & APIs: Leverage Africa's Talking APIs and SDKs to build scalable civic and political solutions.

• Mentorship & Workshops: Learn from seasoned professionals and civic technology experts.

• Collaborative Innovation: Team up across disciplines to bring ideas to life.

• Cash Prizes & Recognition: Win exciting rewards and showcase your innovation.

• Make a Real-World Impact: Build solutions that transform democratic participation and governance access in Africa.

Prizes

The winning solution will receive cash prizes as follows:

• Winner - $100 (Join Marketplace Program)

• 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, Chat, Airtime and Mobile Data 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.

3. Demonstration and Wrap-up

Teams or individuals will demo what they have hacked for feedback or adoption.

Note: Carry a laptop

Opportunities

• Network

• Innovate

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

New to Africa's Talking? Get started here.

Publish on Africa's Talking Marketplace

Marketplace: Get Call Back as a Service and Publish your plugin/app for our customer.

Developer Documentation (We welcome feedback)

New to Africa's Talking? Get started here.

Submit your Idea

• Hackathon idea submission form

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

Join community channels

Slack

Join Africa's Talking slack community here

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• @AfricasTalking

• @ElarianHQ

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• Africa's Talking 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 easily.

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