Jaenique Swartz
The information technology ministry recently hosted its seventh National ICT Summit Hackathon handover ceremony at the University of Science and Technology (Nust).
Participants received the certifications to develop a government hub with solutions that are in the form of fully functional prototypes for enhancing e-government.
One of the winning team members, Dan Kibwika, a third-year Bachelor of Software Engineering student at Nust, detailed his experiences, saying he got to discover so many layers of himself throughout this entire process.
“We built an information hub, which is a centralised system, to enable transparency between the government and its civilians to allow people to know about important things happening when it is taking place. For example, when there is a fire burning, the government should be able to let everyone know on this information hub, which will act as a one-stop online forum to educate the masses,” he explained.
He further stated: “We mainly focused on innovation because we were able to identify that everyone was going to come up with something similar, so our approach was to find out how we can make it unique”.
Kibwika said he often found himself stressed in the beginning, as he needed to adapt to a different way of doing things; however, he still enjoyed the experience, as he got to see a new side of himself that will continue to benefit him in the long run.
He was able to learn how to communicate better in a team, he learned how to be patient and how to manage stressful situations.
The MICT team and its partners will work closely with the winning team to ensure they develop the concepts presented, and they will share their progress, as they wish to have a finalised version of the information hub by April 2024.
Kibwika and his team evaluated and determined the winners based on their innovation, creativity and the ease of integration of their information hub into existing systems.
“I would like to encourage young people to put themselves out there because there are so many things to discover out there. Take a risk; you never know until you try, so do not be afraid to try,” said Kibwika.
Sylvia Tuhafeni, a student at the University of Namibia (Unam), who is pursuing her Honours Degree in Computer Science, shared her experience, delighting in the fact that she was able to connect with so many people and learn along the way in a fun and exhilarating fashion.
“We, as the Namibian youth, get to work towards Namibia’s Vision 2030, which is to see Namibia become an industrialised and prosperous nation by building our human capital so it is very exciting for me that I got to engage and do something that will help the youth and the nation at large,” said Tuhafeni.
-jaeniqueswartz@icloud.com