MoMo Hackathon Heats Up: 5 Southern Finalists Join Race For GH¢100,000 Grand Prize

By Majid Diallo

Five innovators from the Southern Zone have booked their place in the grand finale of the Mobile Money FinTech Limited (MMFL) Fintech Lab Hackathon, after an exciting zonal competition in Accra.

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10 Young Fintech Innovators to Battle for National Finalist Spots at MoMo Fintech Lab Accra Hackathon

The Chief Products and Services Officer of Mobile Money Limited, Sylvia Otuo Acheampong, made the announcement at the just-ended MMFL Fintech Lab Hackathon – Accra.

She said the hackathon is a tech-based competition for developers, entrepreneurs and startups to share ideas, and this year it was enlarged into an ecosystem platform involving partners, banks, fintechs and the Bank of Ghana.

We started this journey a few weeks back when we wanted to enlarge our hackathon competition,” Acheampong said. “We created this platform as an ecosystem platform. So all partners, banks, fintechs, the central bank were all involved in the launch, and the journey started from there.”

The competition started with zonal contests across the country.

In Tamale, in the Northern Zone, 12 participants presented, and five emerged as finalists.

In Kumasi, in the Central Belt, 19 ideas were presented, with another top five qualifying.

The Southern Zone competition was held in Accra, where 10 ideas were presented covering SME savings, credit, waste management and other solutions using the Mobile Money platform as the payment rail.

Five top winners were selected from Accra, bringing the total to 15 finalists for the grand finale.

In the grand finale, it will then be the 15 — five from Tamale, five from the Central Belt, and five from the Southern Belt — who will compete for the grand prize of GH¢100,000,” Acheampong said.

The 10 teams that contested in Accra, in order of ranking, were:

1. Gbe la — 1st
2. Autosave — 2nd
3. Frictionless Tolling — 3rd
4. Eco trust — 4th
5. Adawise — 5th
6. Recyclink — 6th
7. Lebe Finance — 7th
8. ESOG — 8th
9. Connect App — 9th
10. Finora cash — 10th

The top five — Gbe la, Autosave, Frictionless Tolling, Eco trust and Adawise — will represent the Southern Zone at the grand finale.

Each of the five winners received a cash amount of GH¢5,000 instantly, while the other contestants received goodies for their efforts.

Acheampong, who served as a judge and also delivered the keynote address on behalf of CEO Shaibu Haruna, said the ideas presented in Accra were mind-blowing.

We’ve seen a lot of interesting ideas today,” she said. “They are solving critical problems.”

She highlighted the first winner, Gbe la, which is solving the challenge of illiteracy in using text-based apps, by building a model where users can use voice in multiple languages to still transact business.

It’s at its infant stage,” she said, adding that participants received coaching from dedicated partners across the ecosystem to guide them to the zonal stage.

Acheampong stressed that the hackathon is not just about winning money, but about building viable businesses.

These ideas we will also harness them and really see how we can expand on them to become viable businesses. It’s really giving them a platform,” she said.

“We are hoping that there will be startups that will be born out of these ideas that can be expanded, so it’s a full ecosystem backing, and we will support them through and through.”

Participants are being supported with technical and business acumen, and encouraged to test their ideas with customers to get feedback.

We are hoping that all 15 contestants will show up at the grand finale with maybe a more enhanced product and solutions to win,” she said

The competition attracted 1,791 applicants nationwide — the largest since the competition started.

We got 1,791 applicants, which is very impressive. Very, very. It’s the largest we’ve seen since we started running such competition,” Acheampong said.

She also revealed that at the launch, the Minister charged the organisers to expand the hackathon beyond a one-off event into an annual exercise.

The concept has to be expanded. We need to give more people opportunity to come. And this is how we build small businesses and startups,” she said. “Definitely, we will be looking at expanding this, making it more open. Now you’ve gone nationwide, so getting more people to build the confidence to really participate.”

She thanked media partners who have followed the competition from the north to Accra, and urged them to see it through to the grand finale.

So the battle is really sitting within the 15,” she said.