Political Solutions Hackathon Kaduna, Nigeria

Apr 30, 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (UTC)

Africa’s Talking Open Community | West Africa Hub

The Political Solutions Hackathon is a groundbreaking event focused on transforming how Africans engage with democratic processes, governance, and civic participation through technology. Learn more: https://africastalking.com/

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Best PracticesHackathonIn-personInsight API: SIM SWAPSMS APIUSSD APIVoice API

About this event

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.

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.

Addressable Challenges

  • 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.

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 (This can change depending on with the resources available):

  1. Winner - ₦80,000
  2. 1st Runners Up - ₦60,000
  3. 2nd Runners Up - ₦40,000

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)

Additional Information

New to Africa's Talking? 

Get started here: https://github.com/AfricasTalkingLtd/africastalking-devresources

Developer Documentation: https://developers.africastalking.com/

New to Africa's Talking? Get started here.

Developer Documentation (We welcome feedback)


Africa's Talking powers communications solutions across Africa with simplified access to telco infrastructure. Developers use our powerful SMS, USSD, Voice, Chat, Insights, Airtime, Mobile Data, and Payments APIs to bring your ideas to life and build and sustain scalable businesses.


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 taking gigs should fill this form, and it can be shared with developer attendees of AT events)

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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 (developerexperience@africastalking.com)

Speaker

  • Sanusi Abdulkadir

    Africa's Talking Community Lead

    Software Engineer

Mentors

  • Abubakar Saleh

    Africas Talking

    Community Lead

  • Ibrahim Salaudeen

    Data Expo

    Insight Officer

  • Shuaib Lawal Khalifa

    Yahya hub

    Hub Manager & UI/UX Designer

When

When

Thursday, April 30, 2026
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (UTC)

Agenda

Warm Up
Building/hacking: Code in GitHub/GitLab/BitBucket and deploy in Docker/Automated CI/Travis CI/Bamboo
Lunch
Demonstration and Wrap-up

Organizers

  • Sanusi Abdulkadir

    Community Lead Kaduna, Nigeria 🇳🇬

  • Jeremy Acquaah

    Africa's Talking

    Community Lead Ghana 🇬🇭

  • Husseini Mudi

    Software Developer/Community Manager

  • Faith Ono

    Abuja Community Co-Lead

  • Abdulsalam Muhammad Abubakar

    Community Lead Kano

  • David Adegbite

    Abuja Community Co-Lead

  • Sheriffo Jarju

    Gambia Community Lead

  • Ibrahima Sylla

    YeleGroup

    Ivory Coast Community Lead

Global sponsor

Africa's Talking logo

Africa's Talking

Partner

Block Capitol logo

Block Capitol

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