For Nonhlanhla Zembe and her team, Kasi Army, the route to victory and success in a recent coding festival lied in them tapping into their environment.
“Our solution was inspired by our own lived experiences of being in the townships. The situation is dire with high unemployment and with the township economy not being controlled by the township dwellers. In that environment, social ills fester and create a hopeless environment. We looked at the problems and worked our way towards a solution. This solution exists to help township owned businesses to leverage technology to offer their products and services to their immediate communities.
The youthful team came out on top from a total of 114 young digital innovators from across the country. They consist of 29-year-old Zembe, Sinazo Mona, 32, Bongane Mawele, 22, Mamello Mofokeng, 27, Nkululeko Nkosi, 27, Mfundo Ntuli, 27, and Alex Thotse, 25. Zembe echoed the summation by Mikhial Mariemuthu, Empire PF's senior manager, who said: "To be able to see young talented South Africans build innovative solutions through the Microsoft platform showed us that there's a lot of untapped potential in the youth, that can change our country for the better.
"The one thing that we can say to our fellow young people is that if you sacrifice your time to work, learn and open your mind; anything is possible". Empire Foundation has so far worked with over 1,000 young developers and has incubated more than 188 solutions developed. Twenty one teams are being incubated at the student hub and over a half-million rand has been disbursed as prize taking at the hackathons.
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