From factory floors to last-mile distribution, manufacturers need low-friction ways to coordinate people, inventory, and orders across patchy connectivity. This hackathon focuses on practical industrial solutions powered by Africa’s Talking APIs.

Manufacturing is central to Africa's industrial ambitions, yet many plants and SMEs coordinate people, machines, and inventory across patchy connectivity and largely manual processes. The link between the factory floor, suppliers, and distributors is often a phone call or a paper log.

Hackers can build production and downtime alerts, inventory and order coordination, worker communication, and supplier and distributor links that run on simple channels. There is broad latitude to bring real-time coordination to factories that the cloud-first toolset has skipped.

Objectives

• Coordinate field teams and distributors without smartphones.

• Automate order placement and field-team coordination.

• Connect shop-floor sensors and surface operational insights.

Addressable Challenges and API Links

1.  Supply-chain & inventory alerts: Trigger restock alerts and let staff check inventory. 

   •  API Link: SMS API

2.  Field-worker coordination: Dispatch and confirm tasks with technicians by voice..

   • API Link: Voice API

3.   Distributor reporting incentives: Reward distributors with airtime for sales reporting.

   • API Link: Airtime API

4.  USSD order placement: Let distributors place and track orders from any phone

   • API Link: USSD API

5.  IoT & sensor connectivity: Connect shop-floor sensors and telemetry.

   • API Link: Mobile Data API

6.  Operations analytics: Log downtime, defects, and throughput.

   • API Link: Application Data & Insight API

What Participants Should Expect

•  Hands-on technical apprenticeship and API integration sessions.

•  Networking with industry experts, founders, and tech innovators.

•  Support from mentors and a community of peers to refine your ideas.

•  Exclusive prizes, swag, and on-the-spot gig opportunities.

New to Africa's Talking? Get started here.

Developer Documentation (We welcome feedback)

THEME: Manufacturing Solutions

The winning solution will receive cash prizes as follows:

• Winner - ₦80,000

• 1st Runners Up - ₦60,000

• 2nd Runners Up - ₦40,000

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

Take It Further: Make It Marketplace-Ready

Winning the hackathon is just the start. Turn your build into a packaged, reusable product that any business on the Africa’s Talking Marketplace can subscribe to and deploy as their own running instance.

What Makes a Solution Marketplace-Ready

A marketplace-ready solution isn’t just a working app. It’s a packaged, reusable, deployable product. Think of it less as “my project” and more as “a plugin other businesses can pay to deploy.” To qualify, your submission should meet the following:

•  Containerized and pushed to the registry. Built into a Docker image and pushed to the AT-Container registry (manual push or a CI/CD pipeline via GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket).

•  Built on at least one AT product. Integrate with one or more of USSD, Voice, Airtime, Insights, Bulk SMS, Premium SMS, or Mobile Data.

•  Reusable by many. Unlike a private callback, a marketplace plugin is publicly listed and deployable by any customer, and each gets their own isolated instance with its own URL (e.g. https://your-app.africastalking.marketplace.dev).

•  Clearly presented. It needs a name, slug, short and long descriptions, and a logo (required; a missing logo blocks submission).

•  Configurable. Expose any environment variables customers should set at deploy time, and declare your database needs (default: none).

•  Monetizable. At least one pricing plan is required, each specifying currency, amount, billing frequency, and a description.

•  Categorized and compliant. Tag it with at least one AT product and industry (Gaming, Education, Clean Energy, Fintech, Government, or Other), and accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

In short: if a stranger could find your plugin, pick a pricing plan, click Deploy, and get a live working instance, then it’s marketplace-ready.

How to Submit Your Marketplace Solution

1.  Sign in to the Marketplace at marketplace.africastalking.dev (create an account first if needed).

2.  Build and push your image. Containerize your app and push it to the AT-Container registry using the credentials and instructions in the submission form.

3.  From the homepage, click “Create Your Own Plugin.”

4.  Complete the submission form, section by section: container registry credentials; basic plugin info (name, slug, short + long description, logo); technical details (image URL, optional Git repo, database); environment variables (optional); categorization (AT product + industry, at least one); pricing plans (at least one with currency, amount, frequency, description); and accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

5.  Submit. A confetti animation confirms success; an error toast means something needs fixing (most often a missing logo or required field).

6.  Track approval under “Manage Plugins” in the side menu, where you can view review status, see admin feedback, edit, archive, or publish your plugin.

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)

4. Publish on the Marketplace: publish your solution on the Africa’s Talking Marketplace to be considered a winner.

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 the community channels:

• Slack: Join the Africa's Talking Slack Community

• Twitter: @atdevskd

• X (Twitter): @AfricasTalking

• Facebook: Africa’s Talking on Facebook

• Instagram: @africastalking

• LinkedIn: Africa’s Talking Ltd

• YouTube: Africa’s Talking channel

• TikTok: @africas_talking

• GitHub: github.com/AfricasTalkingLtd

• Partnerships: email developerexperience@africastalking.com

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.