JKuat team shines at the 2019 Oracle Student Hackathon in Strathmore

Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology students beat 100 students from 18 universities to pick up top awards at the event.

Phillip Oyier, Mercy Jillo, Keith Kinyua Machina and Kennedy Kamande Wangari outsmarted other developers to clinch the top spot in various categories of the two-day Oracle Student Hackathonheld at Strathmore University.

The event convened by iLab Africa, Moringa School and Oracle Academy, tested the students’ self-expression, unfolding creativity through technology, effective collaboration and teamwork skills in a highly stressed environment.

The students, focusing on four thematic areas including Internet of Things, Application Programming, Data Science and Information Security, spent 48 hours collaboratively identifying problems facing the community in a real world set-up. They then formed innovative solutions to fill the mentioned gaps.

Before the event, all students from universities and colleges were invited to take part in various activities that took place in the month of February.

Participants were then subjected to a Pre-Qualification Stage that required them to describe projects or problems they had tackled and solved before. It is from the mentioned projects that a list of top 100 students was made.

Speaking at the end of the event, Oracle Academy sub-Saharan manager Miss Sefumi Fadahunsi encouraged students from other universities to participate in the initiatives to achieve global visibility through collective efforts.

The winners in each category received glass medal plaques, gift hampers, free Oracle Cloud Credits and guaranteed internship placement.

They will also be the pioneer Mentee Class of the Oracle Student Academy in Kenya.

The student representatives from the Juja-based campus also bagged 60 per cent of the total awards in the Internet of Things and the Data Science categories, ultimately getting a chance to display their working prototypes at the Oracle Cloud Day 2019 held last week at a city hotel.

Egerton University also experienced joy and celebrations when one of their alumni Mr Peter Tabichi, a science teacher at the Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School in Pwani Village, Nakuru, was announced winner of the 2019 Global Teacher Prize in a ceremony held in Dubai days ago.

The 36-year-old teacher with a dream of raising aspirations and promoting the cause of science across Africa beat 10,000 other nominees from 179 countries in the World to bag Sh100 million prize. Mr Tabichi has promised to donate 80 per cent of his pay to buy uniforms and books to those who cannot afford them.