The Tomorrow Team has emerged as winners of the Stanbic-GIMPA Digital Learning Hackathon. The event, which was held at the GB auditorium of the GIMPA, forms part of the Stanbic Bank’s Blue Innovation Digital Impact Programme to drive digital literacy and innovation among the Ghanaian youth.
The event was organised by the Digital Transformation team of Stanbic Bank, ‘Go-Digi’, who worked closely with students from GIMPA over two weeks to develop and use their digital skills to identify and solve problems they face on campus. The winners of the hackathon were awarded a cash prize of GH¢10,000, and the teams that came in second and third place received GH¢8,000 and GH¢5,000 respectively.
Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Aya Ayettey, Head of Production Assurance and Customer Care at Stanbic Bank Ghana, shared that the initiative was directly in line with the bank’s agenda to promote national growth.
She said: “Stanbic Bank is keen on developing young minds and empowering them to dream big and use their skills to change the world. Education is very important for national growth and therefore, we believe in providing a practical aspect to allow our youngsters to think outside the box and use their digital skills. Today, I have been impressed by these young students who have used just two weeks to come up with mind-blowing digital solutions to the problems they face every day as students. The presentations we have seen are proof that given the right opportunities and the requisite skills, the next generation of Ghanaian leaders will be more than capable of transforming our country positively through technology and digitisation”.
“I encourage young people, especially ladies, to take advantage of opportunities like this. I believe that this event is just the beginning, and we will continue to push the digitalisation agenda with these students to empower them to come up with groundbreaking innovative ideas that will transform our nation for the better. Next year, we would love to see even more students participating and working together to come up with digitally-led solutions to the challenges surrounding us. As a bank, we look forward to working with young innovative minds to improve our business and better serve our clients,” she added.
‘The Tomorrow Team’ developed an AI chatbot called ‘Gimpassist’ to provide students easy and on-the-go access to past questions and other learning material. Team Captain Isaac Kwatcha expressed his excitement and thanked the bank for the opportunity.
He mentioned: “For a lot of us, this is our first hackathon and we have learned a lot from this experience. The ‘Go-Digi’ team from Stanbic Bank has been with us from the beginning of this journey, teaching and mentoring us on the digital skills and tools we can use to make life easier. This is the first edition of this event and I know that next year, a lot more students will join and also take advantage of this programme to learn something new and develop their digital skills with Stanbic Bank”.
The Stanbic partnership with GIMPA on digital upskilling is part of the bank’s Blue Innovation agenda to promote innovation and digital skills training. The Stanbic Hackathon is a platform that brings together software developers, experts, policy-makers, academics and industry players to discuss the potential of artificial intelligence and machine learning and develop solutions to address identified problems in the areas of Agriculture, Financial Technology, Healthcare, eCommerce, Mobility, Internet of things, Education and Communication.
