How It All Went Down At The Marie Stopes Health App Challenge

On May 11th, Marie Stopes Uganda launched the marie stopes health app challenge during a press conference at Vodafone Uganda head offices, Kololo Hill Drive.

Marie Stopes Uganda together with Vodafone Uganda who sponsored the event and organized by Hostalite Ltd, invited 60 local developers and innovators across 14 different Ugandan universities including; Makerere University, Uganda Technology and Management University, Ndejje University, International Health Science University, Bugema University, Makerere University Business School, Kampala International University, St. Lawrence, to name a few, to develop a mobile health app solution that promotes young people’s access to sexual and reproductive health services where each university was represented by a group of four individuals for a two-day hackthorn dubbed #Hcahack.

And only one team out of the 60 teams was to walk away with a grand-mega prize.

First day of the hackthorn
Dickson Mushabe, CEO and Founder of Hostalite gave an overview of the hackthorn and the prizes to be won at the end of the two-day coding.

Faith Kyateka, Communications Manager at Marie Stopes Uganda also gave a brief speech on leveraging technology to empower young people from a sexual reproductive perspective. She also emphasized all the hackers to come with projects that would be simpler to be used by people down in the rural areas.

Harriet Adong, Communication Manager at Resilient Africa Network keynoted on why developers should innovate and the needs of understanding adolescent sexual and reproductive health key challenges.

Nicholas Kamazi, Co-Founder of Yoza app, also keynoted on behalf of Africa’s Talking, that were providing free APIs for the hackthorn, about the power of mobile technologies.

Later on in the day, mentors were provided to every group to check on their progress and then at the end of the session, each team/group was requested to pitch/present their ideas to selected panel of mentors.

Second day of the hackthorn
The second day, was for the hackers to make final touches on their projects and preparation for presentations.

Speaking shortly before the winners were announced, Dr. Carol Sekimpi, Managing Director, Marie Stopes Uganda called upon the participants of the hackthorn to have healthy children and minds by choice not by chance and also gave her remarks on the reason for their partnership.

Teams later on presented their prototypes to the judges where, TeamMUNNO from Ndejje University was emerged as the grand winners of the Marie Stopes health app challenge, as TeamUtamu from Uganda Technology and Management University and TeamMpenzi from International Health Science University came as the 1st and 2nd runner’s up respectively.

Congratulations to Team MUNNO from @NdejjeUnivUG @MarieStopesUg @MarieStopes @HostaliteCyber #HcaHACK pic.twitter.com/GTJYRaBIN0

— Vodafone Uganda (@vodafoneuganda) May 14, 2016

TeamMunno walked away with Vodafone handsets, a 4G indoor router (with 50GB of 6mbps data cap per month, for a period of 6 months), 3 months incubation of their app at the Hostalite Cyber Academy, exposure to funding from Marie Stopes Innovation fund plus Marie Stopes health cards vaild for a year, while the 1st and 2nd runners up were given Vodafone handsets and a 4G indoor router (with 50GB of 6mbps data cap per month, for a period of 4 months and 2 months respectively).

All handsets came with 1GB data, 60 min for local calls and international calls to zone 1 countries and FREE WhatsApp for 30 days.

IHSU team comes in at number 3, @utamu_ac_ug 2nd and “munno” in 1st place #HcaHACK pic.twitter.com/Uoy7qa6Yyf

— JoshTwin (@josh_twin) May 14, 2016

In addition to the awards given to the winning teams, Hostalite Cyber Academy also awarded all the participants of the hackthorn scholarships effective of 1st June, 2016

With great thanks to all the organizations that put a hand to make this happen; Bridge Flims, Akira Digital, RoyalWay Media, Pc Tech Magazine, Coca Coal, Africa’s Talking, Nomard, Sync, Exquiste Solution

Summary of the Winners:
Grand Winners: TeamMunno from  Ndejje University.

1st Runners-Up: TeamUtamu from Uganda Technology and Management University.

2nd Runners-Up: TeamMpenzi from International Health Science University.