The World Health Organization branch in Africa has moved to tech to help stem the spread of the novel coronavirus in the continent, and they are banking on the startups to come up with something tot at effect. The health body is doing this by holding virtual hackathons and offering the winners as much as $20,000 in seed funding to see their ideas implemented too.
Note that this is not the first time that they would do something of the sort. At the start of the month, they already held a hackathon where they had a winner and will now be going on the second. It seems that they are addressing the startups by region and this one is for the French speaking part of the African continent.
The rules are simple too. The startups need to come up with ideas that work with the plans which WHO has on ground to fight the COVID-19 so that it is easier to implement the systems and make something happen faster than having to build up new infrastructure.
Back in March, the coronavirus cases in all of Africa were in single digits only. As of the time of this writing, Nigeria alone has entered three digits and the death toll is starting to chime. So that we do not enter the same state as the rest of the world, it is time to step up with moves such as this one.