Malawian FinTech Start-up Trade Flow Analytics have been announced winners of the inaugural Zambia/Malawi Women in FinTech Hackathon, walking home with $2,000 while Mighty Fin from Zambia came second and scooped $1,000.
Organised by HiPipo in collaboration with COMESA Business Council (CBC), the Women in FinTech Hackathon is part of HiPipo’s Include Everyone program being scaled in the COMESA region starting with Zambia and Malawi.
Speaking at the closure of a week-long Hackathon held at Lusaka Legacy Resort, the CBC Chief Operating Officer, Dr Jonathan Pinifolo, noted that while TradeFlow Analytics were the winners, all the 16 participating teams should be proud of themselves because they all exhibited potential to develop solutions that transform lives.
“All teams were very good and they exhibited an understanding of what we were looking for. For instance, they were all able to incorporate and integrate the Mojaloop Open source software and Level One Project Principles in their solutions,” he said.
TradeFlow Analytics is a web solution that relies on data analysis to provide trade information to cross-border traders including available markets and foreign exchange rates. On the other hand, Mighty Fin are developing a savings and loan application called Mama Pay targeting informal women traders and small-scale businesses.
“Our product is based on data and analytics. With the right information, we believe that informal traders can grow their business. We want to make all informal cross-border traders financially included,” noted Deborah Jalakasi, the co-founder of Data Analytics.
“We are very excited, we didn’t expect this. We tried our best. We had two sleepless nights. We believe God has done it for us. We are still a startup. We want to do the technical implementation and make our product live,” she added.
As a woman innovator, Deborah thanked the organisers of the Hackathon for the insightful session targeting women-led organisations and promised that they “are also going to go out there and inspire other women…improve other women.”
Meanwhile, Vwanganji Bowa, the team leader of Mighty Fin, noted that the Hackathon has ‘tested our resilience’ and they are now focused on building a robust platform that can serve across the COMESA region.
Both teams appreciated Comesa Business Council, HiPipo and Gates foundation for championing this event where teams were trained in various aspects such as ideation, conceptualisation and development of Minimum Viable Products.
“We are not going back the way we came,” said Jalakasi.
The HiPipo FinTech Events Manager Charlotte Neeza encouraged all participating teams to continue with their ideas because all of them were good enough to make it to the market.
“We have had six teams from Malawi and ten teams from Zambia. While only two teams have been selected to take the prize money, all other teams are winners. We will continue supporting them and believe that have the capacity to become successful solutions serving people at the bottom of the pyramid,” she said.
