100 innovators shortlisted for 2023 Women in Fintech programme 

More than one hundred young innovators will next week convene in Kampala to take part in this year’s Women in Fintech Hackathon. 

The innovators make up 30 teams from Uganda and Kenya that have made this year’s final list 

While making the announcement in Kampala yesterday, Ms Charlotte Neeza, the HiPipo Fintech events manager, said the interest to innovate has tremendously grown over the past three years, thus the decision to admit 30 teams in 2023, from the 20 that participated in the 2022 edition. 

“Last year, we had 20 teams, which indicated great year-on-year growth for the project compared to 2021. This time around, we have 30 teams, got from close to 100 submissions,” she said, adding that returning and new participants continue to be inspired by the success that previous contestants have had in terms of mentorship, products design, development, go-to market, and seed capital, among other benefits.”

The selection, Ms Neeza noted, had returned more female than males at a ratio of 70 percent to 30 percent respectively. 

Participants are expected to work on financial inclusion products such as payments, savings and loans, e-commerce, e-health, fundraising, agri-tech, e-insurance and remittances.   

The Hackathon, now in its fourth edition, is part of HiPipo’s broader Women in Fintech initiative that also includes the Summit and Incubator programmes. 

The Women in Fintech Initiative seeks to address gender inequalities in financial technology through empowering women with required digital and financial inclusion skills. 

It also seek to champion women’s financial inclusion through active and building financial technology products that are tailored to serve women to support efforts that seek to close gender gap in access to technology, skills, and usage of digital financial services.

Between 2020 and 2022, the Women in Fintech Hackathon, Summit, and Incubator projects have attracted more than 4,000 participants and directly trained more than 300 women, many of whom have since graduated into software engineers and computer science specialists. 

Others have ideated, developed, and launched financial technology products that are transforming communities while many have received seed capital from both the project and external contributors to further pursue their dreams.

The initiative is part of HiPipo’s efforts to empower and include women, supported by a number of partners, among whom include Level One Project, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner and Crosslake Technologies with financing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The 2023 Women in Fintech Hackathon will culminate in the Women in Fintech summit on August 18, where the best-performing teams and individuals will receive $10,000 in collective prize money in addition to automatic qualification to the Women in Fintech Incubator programme that will run from September 

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