The Marketing and Growth Solutions Hackathon is a groundbreaking event focused on reimagining customer acquisition, engagement, and retention through technology. In a continent where businesses face unique challenges in reaching and growing their customer base, this hackathon invites developers, designers, data scientists, and entrepreneurs to create practical and scalable marketing technology solutions that work seamlessly for the African market.

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

Addressable Problems in Marketing & Growth

Customer Acquisition & Lead Generation: Develop scalable platforms and tools for identifying, attracting, and converting potential customers.

Customer Engagement & Retention: Build solutions that enhance customer interaction, loyalty programs, and reduce churn rates.

Marketing Automation & Campaign Management: Create tools that streamline marketing workflows, automate campaigns, and optimize marketing operations.

Content Marketing & Social Media Management: Design innovative platforms for creating, distributing, and managing content across multiple channels.

Analytics & Performance Tracking: Leverage data to provide actionable insights on marketing ROI, customer behavior, and campaign performance.

Personalization & Customer Segmentation: Develop AI-driven solutions for targeted marketing and personalized customer experiences.

SMS & Mobile Marketing Build effective mobile-first marketing solutions leveraging SMS, USSD, and mobile channels.

Influencer & Affiliate Marketing: Create platforms that effectively connect brands with influencers and manage affiliate programs.

E-commerce Growth Solutions: Design tools that drive online sales, optimize conversion funnels, and enhance customer journey.

Brand Management & Reputation Monitoring: Enable businesses to monitor, manage, and protect their brand presence online.

Marketing for SMEs & Startups: Design affordable and accessible marketing solutions for small businesses and underserved markets.

Privacy & Compliance in Marketing: Ensure marketing platforms respect data privacy, consent management, and regulatory compliance.

Objectives

• Bridge the Marketing Gap: Create solutions that improve accessibility, affordability, and effectiveness of marketing tools.

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

• Promote Inclusive Growth: Build solutions that enable businesses of all sizes to compete effectively.

• Encourage Responsible Design: Prioritize privacy, transparency, and ethical marketing practices.

• Enable Impact at Scale: Ensure solutions can grow to benefit thousands of businesses across Africa.

Target Attendees

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

• Marketing Professionals: Practitioners who understand real challenges in customer acquisition and growth.

• AI/ML & Data Scientists: Experts building analytics and predictive marketing models.

• Students & Learners: With a passion for technology and business growth.

• Social Entrepreneurs & Startups: Focused on impactful, growth-first solutions.

• UX/UI Designers: To reimagine digital marketing experiences.

• Business Owners & Growth Experts: Bringing sector-specific insights.

Why Participate?

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

• Mentorship & Workshops: Learn from seasoned professionals and marketing 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 business growth in Africa.

The winning solution will receive cash prizes as follows:

1. Winner - $100 (Join Marketplace Program)

2. 1st Runners Up - $50

3. 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

Please follow our Twitter handles to:

• @AfricasTalking

• @ElarianHQ

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

• 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.