Gamify It! Hackathon in Ethiopia hopes to inspire game solutions for e-learning

Weaving technology into any movement for social change sounds like a sexy campaign line and is easy to suggest, especially on a huge scale across national or continental boundaries. it’s the easy thing to do anyway – speak purposely about the importance of embracing tech for development. What usually lacks is the follow through.

Now, you might not have heard of a team of gamification professionals called Gamification World or Gamify It Hackathons. But these guys and their meetups are trying to bring gamification as a solution to some societal problems all over the world. Right now, there’s one of these hackathons taking place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and it’s meant to be an action point for such declarations on tech and change.

For the next few days, 35 developers from 12 countries across Africa have gathered to participate in a hackathon that is supposed to lead to the creation of gamified apps, computer programs and web portals that could be solutions for challenges in areas like green energy, emergency and disaster management.

The whole exercise has been organised by eLearning Africa, GIZ and an innovation hub in Addis Ababa called IceAddis.

As such, a large focus is on e-learning and vocational training, and the hackathon, which started yesterday (17th of May) will end at the eLearning Africa Conference on the 20th of May. The participating teams will display the solutions that they have been working on to the 1,200 conference attendees. A winning team is to be selected and it will be invited to Germany for OEB; a global, cross-sector conference on tech-supported learning.

A local developer, Wiseman Kuchera, is one of the 35 developers in Ethiopia right now. You might remember his name from Pachikoro, a local online students magazine, as well as the Techlair meetups.

We managed to catch up with him briefly and he highlighted the diverse talent that is being displayed by the different developers taking part in the hackathon. Like the other developers there, he’s hoping that the solution his own team of six is working on will be recognised as the winner.