Everyone who keeps a tab on the local startup scene probably remembers the two Startup Weekend events held last year. Now, Muzinda Hub will be hosting its own Startup Weekend in Harare from the 17th to the 19th of July.
Startup Weekend is a 54-hour hackathon held over a weekend. This format was designed and is promoted by Startup Weekend, a global network of leaders and entrepreneurs that seek to inspire and educate individuals, teams and communities around the world through these entrepreneurial hackathons.
Participants form teams and identify one problem, develop a tech-focused solution and create a prototype that factors in feedback from the market. Winning teams are selected at the end of the weekend. The entire exercise taps into the lean startup methodology.
According to Muzinda, this is an opportunity for local developers to show off their coding and entrepreneurial skills, and it’s something that is likely targeted at its huge pool of developers and entrepreneurs in training. Other people are also allowed to take part.
Over the past few months, Muzinda Hub has shared its plans focused on educating 1,000 local developers. It hopes to encourage Zimbabweans to learn programming as a way to solve societal problems and to empower themselves through gainful employment. This might be Muzinda’s first Startup Weekend, but the Hub has also held hackathons in the past.
Hypercube Hub, another local tech hub, hosted the first two Startup Weekend events. The winner of the last Startup Weekend was Food Match which made a platform that identifies and sources food that’s about to expire from retailers. In Zimbabwe’s first Startup Weekend, the winner was Kwese Music, with a prototype for learning and teaching music called K’tamba.
If you have a great idea which you want to showcase to others or want to experience the excitement of a hackathon, you might want to go to Muzinda Hub tomorrow.
