Team Sonnet and Quick Tap were Thursday evening announced the overall winners of Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) Transport Management hackathon.
The 2-day competition which took place at the Kampala Serena Hotel is part of UCC’s annual innovation awards, ACIA.
It was organized in close partnership with Makerere University School of Public Health; Resilient AfricaNetwork (RAN) with an aim to reduce road accidents in the country as well as better transport.
Other road usage partners including Uganda Police, the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), the Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) among others also took part.
It sought for ideas on how to better manage traffic flow; with the increasing number of private cars in Uganda while most of the roads remain narrow.
Team Sonnet, which was the winner, developed an app that allows roads users to ride alone safely in a car, while Quick Tap’s platform can rate and determine safe public transport.
The two teams were both awarded with USD$500 (Roughly 1.8 million UGX) in startup capital.
On why the innovators were allowed a meager 2 days, Harrient Adong, the communications manager of RAN it was meant to allow the competitors to test their thinking capacities and also prevent them from sabotaging their ideas.
“Giving them limited time enables them to think to think faster, while preventing them from thinking about reasons why they ideas wouldn’t work – a common trait that hinders innovators,” she explained.
Among the other teams that took part in the contest include Dynamite, Arvana, Team SSK, Phone Control App, Transpo XL, Grey Starks and Novus Terra.
UCC Executive Director, Eng. Godfrey Mutabazi who handed over the cheques to the winners encouraged all other youths to embrace ICT innovation saying “it’s the way to go.”[related-posts]
