Yango, Zindi celebrate winners of 2024 Accra Mobility Hackathon

The winners of the inaugural Accra Mobility Prediction Hackathon have been revealed. 

They are Ronny Polle, who took the top spot for his cutting-edge machine learning model, followed by Emmanuel Kwamesekyi and Offei Bekoe.

They placed second and third respectively for their innovative approaches to tackling the city's traffic congestion issues.

At the undergraduate level, the prize went to Duke Kojo Kongo of the University of Ghana for his impressive contribution to the competition.

The event was organised by Zindi Africa and powered by Yango Group, a global technology company.

Enthusiasts

It took place at the University of Ghana, Legon campus, and attracted more than 200 data science students and technology enthusiasts both in person and virtually.

The competition tasked them with developing advanced machine learning models to predict average traffic speeds in Accra at different times of the day.

Their goal was to address practical transportation issues highlighted by Yango's data science team.

Following the success of similar events in Zambia, DR Congo and Mozambique, the top three performers, who presented the most effective solutions, received monetary rewards while other top-performing students received prizes.

Speaking on the impact of the Accra Mobility Prediction Hackathon, the Director General of the National Information Technology Agency (NITA), Richard Okyere-Fosu, expressed his admiration for the initiative and urged many other private sector institutions to follow Yango’s footsteps.

Significant

“This initiative represents a significant milestone in our collective efforts to harness the power of technology and data science to improve urban mobility in Ghana.

We can see a serious collaboration between industry and academia to actually solve real-life issues.

Another pillar of the new ICT policy is digital entrepreneurship, and we are looking to also support these bright talents. We want to commend Yango and Zindi for this initiative and encourage them to do more to promote technology and digitalisation in Ghana,” he said.

A Senior Lecturer at the Computer Engineering Department of the University of Ghana, Dr Nii Longdon Sowah, also shared his excitement about the turnout of the hackathon and encouraged further collaborations like this in the near future.

“The Accra Mobility Hackathon saw a strong turnout, with students from over five universities in Ghana taking part. Participants came from the University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ashesi University, Central University, Accra Technical University and the Ghana Communication Technology University.

Many of the students were new to hackathons and found the experience eye-opening. Working alongside their peers, they gained valuable skills in tackling real-world issues in real-time. Looking ahead, we are excited about the possibility of future collaborations with Yango and Zindi,” he said.

The Country Manager for Yango Ride in Ghana, Tom Ofonime, also hinted at Yango's vision for Technological advancement in the market.

The maiden edition of the Accra Mobility Hackathon witnessed a high involvement of females, with 32 women making up 16 per cent of the total number of participants.

The top-performing model in the hackathon achieved an RMSE score of 1.42, demonstrating a highly accurate prediction with an average error rate of just 1.42 per cent.