Afrigather In August 2021, Botswana’s Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board (PPADB), answerable for the contracting course of for presidency tasks, announced that that they had authorised a request by the Workplace of the President to make use of hackathons as a way of procurement for tasks associated to the digitisation of presidency providers.
The initiative meant that the accountable ministry, as a substitute of going by means of the traditional tendering course of the place qualifying corporations must submit their venture proposals for consideration which might culminate in a single firm being chosen after a screening course of, might do the choice by means of the usage of hackathons.
Hackathons are social coding occasions the place members interact in speedy and collaborative engineering over a comparatively quick time frame equivalent to 24 or 48 hours, with an finish aim of making functioning software program or {hardware}.
The PPADB’s resolution polarised the developer neighborhood in Botswana’s startup ecosystem, with some arguing that the transfer units priority for the exploitation of builders. Others have identified that it’s an effective way for native builders to get authorities contracts with out going by means of the tedious tendering course of.
From how the federal government hackathons work, it’s straightforward to know why some builders in the neighborhood can be cautious of them. The federal government places out an invite to builders for the event of an internet service and provides money prizes to the winners. With this mannequin, the primary concern that arises is, who owns the Mental Property(IP) of hackathon merchandise?
In keeping with Mthabisi Bokete, the CEO of Digital Natives who partook in and received one of many hackathons, the contract supplied to members makes it clear that every one IP produced throughout the course of the occasion belongs to the organisers of the hackathon, the federal government.
“Earlier than we partook within the hackathon, it was clear that no matter we created throughout the course of the occasion would belong to the organisers. Whether or not that is good or dangerous is in fact, a subjective concern, however Digital Natives determined to go forward with participation as a result of the prize cash would go a great distance in serving to with our working bills.”
One other concern raised with the hackathons is whether or not the successful developer or startup will implement the precise venture, which is little doubt extra beneficial than the same old hackathon prize of P70,000.00.
After Bokete and Digital Natives received their hackathon, they weren’t awarded the contract for the implementation of the particular system. Bokete attributes this to misalignment in costing between his firm and the hackathon organisers, as they didn’t hear again after submitting their citation.
“They reached out to us with a request for a citation. We needed to implement the system on a SaaS mannequin as we believed this may not solely profit our stability sheet by means of recurring income, but additionally profit the venture as we might be answerable for any future upkeep or upgrades. We shared our pricing however sadly, to today, we by no means acquired a response,” Bokete acknowledged.
For Bokete, there are facets of the hackathons which are helpful to the ecosystem however others have to be improved. For instance, he believes the hackathons give startups a chance to accumulate profitable authorities contracts with out going by means of the traditional tendering course of, wherein they must compete with larger corporations with extra capital. Moreover, he additionally believes the prize cash for successful the hackathons goes a great distance in serving to startups like his finance their operations.
“After all we might have cherished to have come to an settlement almost about implementing the precise system which might have been profitable for us, however nonetheless, the prize cash that we received for first place was helpful to our enterprise operations.” Bokete remarked.
On what he thinks will be completed in another way, Bokete acknowledged that having a extra organised and uniform system would go a great distance in making certain that techniques developed by hackathon successful groups have longevity.
“There must be uniformity when it comes to language used, coding types, and conventions in order that even when a selected workforce implements a system and leaves the venture, the workforce that comes after them can take over with out a lot concern. Presently, i believe this isn’t the case,” Bokete mentioned.
For different entrepreneurs, the forms linked with the hackathons makes it troublesome for growth- and maturity-stage corporations to profit from the initiative.
“When you’ve got invested time and assets to construct a product, then hackathons aren’t offering the required ecosystem help. Revolutionary services can’t be hacked— it takes intentional funding, experimentation, and iteration to construct value-adding options,” mentioned Tebogo Mogaleemang, co-founder and organisation lead at Spectrum Analytics.
Based mostly within the capital Gaborone, Spectrum Analytics is an innovation studio that provides options to organisations trying to adapt and thrive within the digital economic system. One among their flagship merchandise is MmaB, an internet platform that matches weak Batswana to social help applications and providers.
In keeping with Mogaleemang, regardless of receiving funding from authorities to construct the platform, they’re anticipated to attend for a related hackathon if their answer is to be adopted by the federal government, an element which put the brakes on an already confirmed prototype.
“Ready on the subsequent thought to hack shouldn’t be a viable empowerment choice for individuals who have invested time to construct commercial-ready merchandise…MmaB is on a hackathon queue regardless of being funded from a nationwide innovation fund. Why fund startups and topic their merchandise to a hackathon? How is that creating ROI on innovation funding?” Mogaleemang requested.
Mogaleemang believes that relying on how they’re structured and positioned, hackathons generally is a helpful car for startup and innovation ecosystem improvement. Nevertheless, if an organization has invested time and assets to construct a product, then hackathons don’t present the required ecosystem help.
“I feel Botswana Digital & Innovation Hub and the federal government want to have interaction startups throughout the ‘maturity’ spectrum, and genuinely be open to being influenced on how the present hackathon mannequin and the SmartBots public innovation procurement model will be re-innovated. Hacking the procurement course of for startup market entry was revolutionary. There’s nonetheless room for enchancment although. How can we improve the mannequin to favour startups at totally different levels of their product improvement journey? Are hackathons the one viable means to supply market entry? Can we construct a sustainable startup ecosystem with issues as they’re?” concluded Mogaleemang.
There are different entrepreneurs within the Botswana tech ecosystem who maintain the hackathons initiative in excessive regard. One such entrepreneur is Letsibogo Ramadi, founding father of PCG Software program, a software program improvement agency based mostly in Gaborone. PCG Software received one of many government-sponsored hackathons and was finally contracted to implement the precise venture.
“After you win the hackathon, they [organizers] will name you. You’ll then negotiate a deal based mostly on the specifics of the venture. After which it’s mainly backwards and forwards. The negotiations can take like as much as per week, two weeks, or perhaps a day. So in case you guys handle to return to an settlement, they offer you a contract for nonetheless lengthy it’s going to take to implement the venture, which is normally between 1 and three years,” mentioned Ramadi.
He believes that the hackathons have gone a great distance in enabling small improvement groups within the nation to have entry to extremely profitable authorities contracts which have historically been received by larger and principally overseas corporations. As such, his opinion is that the initiative has had a constructive influence on the ecosystem.
“I feel it’s a mannequin that may work rather well in opening up alternatives. Let me give an instance with my firm. Once we began off with the venture we received the hackathon for originally of this yr, we had six staff. With this chance, we now have 12 staff, and truly must deliver on extra staff. So we’ve gotten a chance to truly create high quality employment and I imagine this is applicable for all the opposite corporations who’ve been contracted by the federal government after successful their respective hackathons,” added Ramadi in an interview with TechCabal.
He additionally added that the initiative has empowered startups and tech corporations within the nation to fund their very own in-house options which additional grows the ecosystem and results in prime quality merchandise being offered to the market.
By the metrics of the hackathons’ organisers, the initiative has been profitable , since its launch. Kgotlayarona Basalumi, digital innovation supervisor on the Botswana Digital & Innovation Hub which organises the hackathons mentioned, “The response from the totally different stakeholders has been constructive and that’s confirmed by collaboration and partnerships created by means of the hackathons. Thus far we’ve got carried out 25 hackathons, with 4 coming from the non-public sector and 21 from the general public sector.”
Botswana has a inhabitants of solely 2.3 million, a really nascent tech ecosystem, and minimal enterprise capital flowing into the nation. So in idea, the SmartBots procurement initiative utilizing hackathons seems to be a great alternative for startups within the nation to entry a lot wanted capital by way of profitable authorities contracts.
In keeping with its website, the SmartBots initiative goals to “benefit from the alternatives offered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and transfer the nation in the direction of the Information-Based mostly Financial system (KBE), with out leaving anybody behind.” Based mostly on the aforementioned conversations with the totally different stakeholders within the initiative, from builders to the organisers, there appears to be validity to this aim.
Nevertheless, many stakeholders imagine that the problems raised, together with accommodating extra mature developer corporations within the hackathons, speaking the construction of the hackathons extra clearly, and being extra open and liberal in negotiations with successful startups in awarding the system implementation contracts, nonetheless have to be addressed.
