Hackathons: Harmony x Pan Africa Hackathon

Web3 Hackathons
1

Name of Hackathon

[THE PAN AFRICAN HACKATHON] - The Web3 Hackathon

Proposal overview

Afrikathon x Harmony (The Web3 Hackathon 2022)

What is Afrikathon

Afrikathon is the Largest Pan African Hackathon on a mission to evolve the next generation of learners, and inventors in Africa using hackathons. Our vision is to bring opportunity and exposure to the doors of mission-driven projects across Africa that can positively impact our society.

We are committed to making sure this becomes an annual event as we experienced a massive show of interest and sponsorship during the last Hackathon.

Our last Hackathon was the Opportunity Hackathon, you can Learn More about it here.

This Year we are hosting the (Web3 Conference & Hackathon — This Summer)

It is going to be a 13-day Web3 Virtual Hackathon and The final Grand Demo Day / Conference in a popular African City, where we are expecting over 1000 attendees physically and over 2,000 watching virtually. The Hackathon Finalists and some 20 Judges would be in attendance.

We would love Harmony to be our headline Sponsor.

Our Ask

About Us

We are a team of hackers. Our collective is Wecode Africa – Builders contributing to Civic Society in Africa. Our Core team members are also Alumni of the MESTAfrica. The Afrikathon project actually started during the lockdown, over 20 developers, designers, and entrepreneurs who lived in the same Apartment building at the time agreed to come together to build out the biggest Pan-African Hackathon in Africa and we did.

How Does Afrikathon Work?

Part 1: The Hackathon

The Hackathon process is tied around design thinking, we bring in Experts within the Community, like Yann from yux.design, as well as other experts, lead design thinking sessions and start a problem/solution assessment from the Hackathon theme and then teams are formed within attendees and these teams work together around various different solutions which they now build an MVP around and showcase for the judges at the end of the process.

For accessibility, Africa has a lot of languages so we break the language barrier by targeting the 2 out of the 3 cross-regional languages in Africa, Out of English and French and Swahili, all our correspondence would be communicated both in English and French

Part 2: The Demo Day x Web3 Conference

Right after the hackathon process is over, we end it with a bang on a Big Saturday in Lagos, Nigeria where we fly in the top 10 finalist projects and the judges including Harmony representatives. We also plan to have over 800 in attendance as this would be the first Web3 conference to happen in Africa at this magnitude. Call for Papers go out a month before the hackathon starts and selected speakers, industry leaders and web3 ecosystem influencers in Africa would be duly invited.

Why we believe Harmony is the best partner for this

Harmony shares the same ethos we believe our participants will appreciate

  • Low cost and Fast
  • We are Harmonians - Daccred also born out of our commitment to Afrikathon and Communities in our region
  • Environmental Friendly Blockchain Network

Harmony is also really interested in growing a huge audience from Africa where the faster-growing population and fastest crypto adoption is happening in the world. There is a huge gap for a strong blockchain leader to take charge and own this market even at this very early but crucial stage of crypto adoption.

Event Overview and Plan Brief

The major capital needs are in 4 categories

  • Prize Pool contribution from Harmony $100,000 for winning teams [5-8 teams in total] :

At the end of the two weeks continent-wide hackathon, the judges would pick the final 8 teams who would be pitching their products on the Web3 Conference Day. Each of these final teams gets post-hackathon coaching and integration into the Harmony Blockchain Community, pictures with Delegates including Harmony representatives, and application help if they want to go further and apply for any Harmony Grants.

  • Event Planning, Salaries, and Promotions in all tech media outlets across Africa

    There are 20 organizers for these two events: the hackathon itself and the Web3 conference. For the hackathon, we plan to send every organizer a fixed amount of [$3,000 - TBC] each for the 3 months and a few weeks process including pre-hackathon, hackathon, conference, and post hackathon experience.

    We are hiring a Logistics Coordinator who would take a flat rate to help us handle finding and booking event centers, booking flights, arranging dinner and video recording/streaming of events, and printing Award placards.

    There are about 62 tech publications across Africa [could be more] and we plan to pay for a 2 weeks AD splash slot close to the Hackathon date in at least half of them.

  • Travel and Hotel accommodation logistics for winning teams and judges

    We are looking to fly in around 25 people into Lagos for a 3-night stay for the Delegates’ dinner and the Web3 Conference and Awards Event. 1-2 people per team and then 7 judges including Harmony Representatives.

  • Delegates dinner and Event space booking and Food (GRAND DEMO DAY)

    We plan to hold the first Web3 Conference at the same magnitude as a ETH Denver x GDG Fest version in Africa.

We’re targeting a 1,500 seater space and have shortlisted locations in Accra and Lagos (To be decided)

Afrikathon Partnerships

Our partners enable us to widen our reach, We partner with Africa global radio to widen our reach in local communities, from Facebook to communities with radio, we are able to reach enthusiasts who may be non-technical but very important to our design thinking process. As we are a core community of hackers and builders, access to Non-technical folks is the full beauty for us.

Watch one of the episodes from AGR for a Participants Testimonial https://web.facebook.com/watch/?v=254015285807723

Watch one episode from one of our Judges: https://web.facebook.com/watch/?v=318790469105903

Afrikathon in the News

We’ve been featured

Afrikathon Social

Goals & Metrics

  1. 8k hackers reach in total over the 3 weeks period.
  2. 3 Winning projects that apply and get accepted into the Launch Grant
  3. Harmony Logo beside the Afrikathon banner
  4. 3 Talks and workshops on Harmony
  5. Every year we build an internal hacker platform based on the experience. Last year we built our Hackathon Platform Named Kente [link to an article on Afrikathon]. And we designed it around the Ethos of the Opportunity Hackathon + Design Thinking Experience. This Year we are building a Decentralized Hacker Platform (Multi-Sig Team Formation layer + Price Bounty Distribution) — A bit ambitious, but this is usually our own internal hackathon pre the hackathon, to bond and also gear everyone up too.
    1. We automatically created Github Repositories and Slack channels for these teams, we designed the hacker experience around our users, so that it could be easy to onboard even non-technical folks that were team leads.[Slack + Github Automation]
    2. Design Thinking was a core requirement for each Individual Participant, before they could ascend to the next phase of the Hackathon - Forming Teams
  6. Harmony would be the Blockchain Protocol advocated during the Hackathon Period, all Projects will be built and submitted for the Harmony Blockchain

Past Events

Post Hackathon Program

[https://airtable.com/shrpLE18UdjAbRiZY]

We run a 6-8 weeks Post-Hackathon Program with this teams to help them build out the remaining part of their products, We peer code with them, assign mentors who assist teams to get the first iteration of their build, and try to support them to push beyond the hackathon.

Target Harmony Communities & DAO

One of the goals we can achieve with this event is to provide an opportunity for the various DAOs within the harmony Ecosystem to come together in one short sprint where we focus on Harmony DAO related goals and work together to achieve them for everyone. AfricaDAO, NaijaDAO, ONEGhana, Kenya etc

How we design each hackathon (Breakdown)

We build our own automation tools around each hackathon. Example — Opportunity Hackathon dealt with people with little to no tech experience, so we designed our portal to cater to it

The Afrikathon Network

Where we have reach.

  • Moringa School (Kenya, Ghana)
  • MEST Africa (South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya)
  • Journee du Code (Ivory Coast)
  • DiV (Community of Female Developers In Vogue)
  • Magueritte (Mali Girls)
  • YUX (Senegal)
  • Baddies in Tech (Diaspora Women in Tech)

The Team

We love Entrepreneurship
We love to Build
We are passionate about the Africa Tech Ecosystem

Nwose Lotanna

Communications & Operations
Profile

Currently Marketing Manager for RunX, a DevOps Startup in San Francisco, Leading operations at Daccred, a web3 NFT Startup, and building various really successful communities like Startup couches for founders. He is very passionate about communities and making sure the ugly work behind-the-scenes that ensures program success is done and done well.

Abdulhafeez Babatunde

Hacker Experience
Profile

Hafeez is one of the most talented Product person you’ll ever meet :hugs: , Founder for a Logistics startup operating in Ghana, Nigerian and Botswana

Placide Bakala

Partnerships
Profile

Placide has lead development programs across francophone Africa, (Ivory Coast, Congo to name a few)

Anila Busolo

Partnerships
Profile

Moringa School & MEST Africa Alumnix, 1x Founder of a VC funded Data Collection Company and a Proficient Data Scientist

Andrew Miracle

Team Lead
Profile

Andrew has led efforts for a Software and Cloud Companies gaining adoption in African Communitied, Organized events from Concerts to Festivals and Carnivals targeting some of the toughest demographics and even Development Programs across several regions from Meetups with Adults to training programs targeting kids in Rural Regions

Full Team Team - Afrikathon

Glad to answer any questions and feedback.

2 Likes
2

finally excited we are about to do Afrikathon again!

3

Yes! Looking forward to building on the success from last year.

1 Like
4

Yass! Can’t wait! :partying_face::partying_face:

5

Hi guys! So If we go along to partner with Harmony - There’s an opportunity to tagline this year’s Afrikathon — The ONE Hackathon. With this Tagline, there’s room for many possibilities in our PR initiative. For instance, a ONE themed essay, a ONE themed event copy, a ONE themed song, etc. minted as an NFT on the Harmony Blockchain and auctioned during the event :wink: Excited!!

1 Like
6

Brilliant.
I love the ONE Theme Song (minted on-chain) :grin:.
The ingredients are there. ONE – Blockchain (peer2peer) – Africa – Youth :star: :star:

Already loving this

1 Like
7

Hello, thank you for taking the time to publish this proposal. Congratulations on getting activities runnning again. I really like the way you focus on the Sustainable Development Goals! My understanding is that the 300k is a lot, particularly keeping in mind that the majority of activites are online. I would perhaps propose to Harmony something smaller, and measurable for a first collaboration (not my decision of course, just thinking outloud here).

Also, have you reached out to other chains that could potentially co-fund? Funding attracts funding.

Since I work closely with the team, I’d love to jump on a call with you guys and discuss further. Please DM me if you think a talk could help!

1 Like
8

Thanks a lot @ep2338 for the feedback.
Will send you a DM so we can have a chat – I would really love to.

Also we have a shortlist of chains we’re sending out the same proposal to, and a couple other services that would collaborate with this, the relationship is thus [ headline chain + decentralized storage + on-chain data aggregators + blockchain protocols etc]

We care about sustainability, You will also not that we allocate 1/3 to the prize pool.

Post Hackathon

This runs after the hackathon for 6 weeks, where we bring Industry experts and work with a team to coordinate winning teams communication, tech and business development for their hackathon projects.

One of the challenges with this is that you need to incentivize participants to some extent, immersive mentoring, allocating a portion of their prize pool to allowance during the 6 weeks (Average team size of 4)

Logistic

We have a Grand Demo day, which is an in-person event 2 weeks after the Hackathon, where we invite Finalist to also attend the main event (Our goal is to cover their logistics and host them) with a pre-event workshop before the Grand Demo Day x Conference. We would also like to bring in some experts and have designed an experience around the event in a way we think would be beneficial to all attendees.

COVID has disrupted events for a while, but one of the major goals for Afrikathon is breaking the divide. I’ve seen first hand what it’s like when you are able to bring bright minds from across Africa together, to collaborate and build and I can tell you, we need to do more.

Last year we had challenges with country of incorporation for most of the ideas, but this year DAOs change everything, and its something we are looking to push moving further, to facilitate borderless collaboration.

So yeah our current ask isn’t enough to fulfill our vision for this years event, we are also reaching out to other sponsors and partners to get as much as we need.

However, kindly share suggestions and and ideas you have and I would love to jump on a call with you as well.
Will send a DM after this.

9

I want to thank the Governors of the AfricaDAO and specifically @ep2338 for their support in brainstorming and planning out the vision for our hackathon event.

We’ve been able to lean out a lot of things, and also have secured 2 sponsors for the event (announcements later). For our harmony proposal we are looking to close out on a Headline Sponsor and our refined ask is $120,000 for the prize pool and event.

Our prize pool target for Top 10 finalist is

1st $25,000
2nd $15,000
3rd $10,000
$3,000 for teams 4-10, alongside sponsor prizes.

As a headline sponsor

  • All projects will be built exclusively on harmony
  • You logo will be alongside the Afrikathon logo throughout the event
  • Two (2) roll-up banners in the main conference room & at the entrance for the Grand DEMO day
  • Large logo on all holding slides shown between talks
  • Opportunity to engage directly with attendees by any means during the hackathon (subject to approval by organizers)
  • 3 Talks and workshops on Harmony
  • Company name and logo in all of our email campaigns
  • One (1) keynote speaker slot (subject to approval by organizers)
  • Logo on Event Swags & T-shirt
10

Hi there!!
Taking a close look at this proposal.
What about having someone from the Harmony community/group around that could be contacted and invited to the event?
How do you are planning to make engagement with the Harmony protocol? Before and after the Hackathon?
Thank you for the info!

:blue_heart: :rocket: :one:

1 Like
11

Hi @jbeltran – Thanks for the Q

We actually intend to do this, there are a couple key personnel within the community that we’ve collaborated / interacted with on TG and Discord, though nothing has been proposed yet, we intend to host (full expense) at least one person from the harmony community/group, and also provide welfare for anyone within the community who can show up for the IRL Demo Day event.

Regarding this there are a few strategies we’ve put in place.

  1. The hackathon platform for this year will be a bounty where participants from our past events will come together for a buidl sprint on the harmony protocol. What we can work on is to engage members of the harmony community on discord and telegram as well as our past participants to work on a bounty with specifications and get hands warm, pre- main event.

  2. We are also engaging with communities within various regions who have already agreed in principle to outreach the Harmony Protocol with materials we create. These materials will be an edu series that will focus on on-boarding users to the principles of building on the blockchain, and resources from the harmony documentation and blogs out there that should guide them. We already have this in place with an initiative we are playing a major role in – https://buidl.africa

  3. For our partners who will be sponsoring the event, an NFT deployed on the harmony blockchain will be issued to them. This is made possible by Daccred

Post Hackathon

  • We have a post hackathon program structure that works. For this hackathon, the cycle completes when the winning teams have refined their hackathon projects and submitted it here on the forum for a launch grant.
13

Welcome, @koolamusic, and thank you for sharing your proposal with Harmony. I have a few questions:

  1. What are the dates for the event?

  2. Can you detail where the remaining $49,000 will be used? A deep breakdown of costs will be very helpful.

  3. Who are the other sponsors?

  4. Will this be open concept, or are there specific tracks?

  5. Do you have a sponsorship deck that I can look at? If it has already been linked in this proposal, let me know if I missed it.

Thank you,

Matty

14

Hi @Mattyontap

  1. The proposed event dates: 15th-27th August 2022 (events are detailed in the sponsorship deck)
  2. Here is a link
  3. Other sponsors include ALX University, Protocol Labs, Immutable Labs, Baddies in Tech.
  4. The Hackathon would be open concepts around web3 usage and adoption. We want to bring Harmony on board as a Headline sponsor and use Harmony as the official chain to build on.
  5. Here is the link to the sponsorship deck.
1 Like
15

@viclotana, thank you for your detailed response. Unfortunately, we are not sponsoring any new events at this time. I know this is temporary, so I invite you to stay in contact with us on future opportunities.

:blue_heart:

1 Like