DataHack4FI is an innovation competition that promotes evidence-based decision-making for improved financial service provision to low-income individuals. The competition brings together data enthusiasts and financial service providers (FSPs) to crowdsource data-driven solutions to real-world challenges.
The competition is aimed at the delivery of appropriate financial services to undeserved and low-income segments of society, in a way that enables them to meet their needs to consume, manage risks and unlock opportunities to improve their lives.
The competition is set to be held in 8 countries i.e Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana, Uganda, Mozambique, Senegal and Kenya with the grand finale in Kigali, Rwanda. The competition seeks to promote collaboration between innovators in Africa and FSPs.
It is open to many innovative minds across Africa. This competition and Hackathon weekend is set on bringing together data specialists (analysts and software developers) and FSPs to leverage tools and technologies for crowd-sourcing data-driven solutions to real-world problems.
Big data and alternative sources of data will be a key basis of this competition, underpinning new waves of decision making, innovation and client insights analytics in the development of new financial services products that appeal to the undeserved/poor.
This data innovation competitios is an initiative of i2i (Insight 2 Impact). In Uganda they are partnering with Laboremus, UNCDF and FSDU. The event will take place from 31st March upto the 2nd of April at The Innovation Village, Ntinda.
Laboremus Uganda is part of the Laboremus Group and was established in 2013 as a stand alone profit center with it's main investor being Laboremus Oslo AS. Today Laboremus Uganda has 18 employees.
It was set up with the vision to build the IT sector in Uganda and in this way keep large IT contracts in the country. Currently, they are getting contracts from both private and government organizations as well as some from Kenya. This is surprising as one wouldn't expect Kenyan companies to outsource IT services from Uganda as the country is commonly referred to as the technology hub of East Africa.
According to Laboremus, Uganda has many talented graduates and a growing market for IT. At the same time, few professional structures and expertise to handle large projects and they are often sold to vendors abroad. Laboremus Uganda wants to fill this gap and provide complex and high standard software services to clients in Uganda and the rest of the region.
By doing this, they are creating much needed jobs for young graduates, as well as contributing to the development of the country by paying taxes.
Laboremus' area of expertise is Electronic Document Archives, Internet and mobile banking, Fintech and innovation, Mobile payments, Websites, Financial Inclusion, Microsoft Cloud, Office 365 Licences, Dynamics CRM, SharePoint, Mobile Apps and Data analytics.
Apply to the The Datahack4FI Hackathon by clicking here.