The University of Cape Coast edition of the Hackathon for university students has been wrapped up with a launch of the competition at the University of Cape Coast.
Hackathon is a way of engaging both graduate and undergraduate students to explore the Ghana Statistical Service Population and Housing Census Data to come up with innovative ideas that can inform policy and be important for potential investment.
Apart from students of the University of Cape Coast, students from four other public universities including the University of Ghana who have already had their turn, University of Development Studies, University of Health and Allied Sciences and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology will also have the opportunity to take part in this competition.
At the University of Cape Coast, 25 students who were put into six teams took part in the Hackathon which began on Sunday, September 10, 2023.
The teams are Team Mean, Team Badwenba, Team SkyUp, Team Robust Research, Team Great Minds and Team UCC.
All these teams came up with great innovations but Team Great Minds emerged as winners.
The Government Statistician, Professor Kobina Annim who spoke about the winning team’s product explained that the winner for the UCC came up with a product that has huge potential to resolve some challenges government statisticians have with working with data to inform policy.
In addition, he said “Essentially, what they’ve brought up is how we can have an Artificial Intelligence to query the census data and going forward any other data by asking different questions and the Artificial Intelligence to recoil up the result for you”
Some members of Team Great Minds could not hide their joy when they spoke with ATL FM NEWS.
They believe God, hard work and the need for the technology they have created won them the first position.
While Team Great Minds walked away with GHS 5,000.00, the First and Second Runners Up took home GHS 2,000.00 and GHS 1,000.00 respectively.
Read also: GSS launches the Statsbank: Online Data Repository
Source: Rosemond Asmah/ATLFMNEWS
