MTN Uganda Announces Top 3 Winners

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The MTN Hackathon has been happening across different nations where MTN MoMo is deployed. The country-wide hackathon finally come to a halt last Friday as MTN in partnership with Outbox announced the top three winners who really stood out. The top three winners walked away with a share of 10,0000 USD.

Team E-Wage managed to leave with a stupendous monetary reward of 5,000 USD, Team MpaMpe which came second won 3,000 USD while the third group, M-Pay won 2,000.

The Hackathon | Event

It all started with the call of submissions in July 2022. Over 1,000 developers applied with 149 submissions received only in Uganda. Among these 62 were selected for the first rollout. Then 12 o/f 62 made it as finalists. Out of 12, only 3 emerged as overall winners.

The two-month-long Hackathon executed by MTN MoMo Uganda Limited in partnership with the Outbox underwent four main stages as noted on the official site. The 12 shortlisted groups had experienced the last phase (fourth phase) of prototype submission.

Only eight of the initially selected 12 finalists were able to turn up in this last phase. The 8 teams that represented and pitched had great ideas, with others having already stepped foot in the market. These teams included Afro Tech Soldiers with BNPL, Culipa with Lipi Pay, MpaMpe, Kadama Wallet, MPay, Katwezimbe, Mob-Save, and E-Wage.

The top three winners were selected on Friday following a ten-minute pitch including a demo to a panel of about five seasoned judges from MTN MoMo and Outbox hub.

“It takes the Ugandan Ban an enormous amount of money to print hard currency. As MTN, we want t support those solutions that can leverage the exposed APIs and build innovative solutions as we advance to a cashless society.”

– Richard Yego, MD MoMo Uganda MTN

Speaking at the event, Richard added, MoMo Pay has 90,000 outlets and our goal is to make sure that we triple that number in the year to come.

“Our mandate is to link developers and aspiring entrepreneurs to opportunities that expose them to learn about what other developers across MTN’s footprint and beyond are doing to inspire innovations that will drive Africa’s progress. I implore developers to utilize such opportunities to network as that is how learning and growth happens.”

– Richard Zulu, Co-founder at Outbox

Let’s drift away from the 7-8 hour event which was so intense, breathtaking, and impactful with many brilliant ideas and solutions. These were the top three winners.

1. E-Wage

E-Wage will be an online payroll system for casual workers that uses the momo API disbursement service to send wages to the mobile account of casual workers which will replace how many companies pay casual workers which involves standing in long queues to get weekly wages.

The application will also keep records, process payments, and ease the work of processing weekly payrolls for casual workers. One Ronald Akuayo led E-Wage and they walked away as overall winners with a cash prize of 5,000 USD.

2. MpaMpe

MpaMpe will be a hybrid crowdfunding application that seeks to bridge the gap between the needy/beneficiaries/campaigners and funders/sponsors/donors to support their ideas through a transparent model and accountability of funds.

The word MpaMpe locally means ‘Give Me I Give Out’. It is a financial and digital inclusion web app created to tackle local community needs in Uganda post-covid-19 pandemic.

I had the privilege of leading this team and delivering it to its glory as the first runner’s app; we received a cash prize of 3,000 USD.

3. M-Pay

M-pay will be an online platform that enables users to create a wallet, deposit funds directly onto it, and then have the wallet balance paid out to a number of multiple subscribers with a single transaction.

This group was led by Gerald Muhwezi and they bagged 2,000 USD contributing to the 10,000 grand prize pool.

Conclusion

The teams were encouraged to use the money as startup capital for their ventures, and ensure registration, production, and further developmental deployment to the market.

I am personally excited to have been merged among the top three teams. I lead team MpaMpe and am looking out to investing further in the platform to make it production and market ready.

Source: dignited.com