Young people in Soweto were presented an opportunity by the Gauteng e-Government department to participate in a Hackathon that is earmarked to enable them to showcase their creativity, talent and technological development that took place on 18 and 19 June at the YMCA Soweto Campus at Dube, Soweto. Dubbed ‘Build, Innovate, Impact!’ The G13 Hackathon Series is meant to position the youngsters as pilots of the program to bring solutions that will identify service delivery issues in communities through the use of AI.
Ward 38 Councillor Phindile Simelane spoke at the event that “as we have service delivery challenges in our wards, with this program our kids will help us hack and solve problems in our areas all the way from Ikwezi, White City, Orlando West, etc. Including Dube as the centre of the ward where we are this day.” They will practically be assisting the City of Joburg with issues such as, faulty street light, potholes, water leaks in essence they will assist the councillor office, the City of Joburg and the Provincial Government making use of technology to log in calls with the municipality and utilities empowered by the department’s technology infrastructure.
In his keynote address MEC for e-Government, Bonginkosi Dhlamini mentioned that e-Gov aims to digitize the services of all government departments. “We plan to bring services straight to your gadgets conveniently where you are as a citizen. While digitizing we also rolling out free Wi-Fi to our communities in schools, libraries, etc. He encouraged young aspiring learners to study ICT courses as that is the future in digital economies.”
MEC Dhlamini further stated that “youth must help us solve problems by hacking issues such as unemployment and bring solutions to the fore.” Young people at large must not despair but take opportunities in ICT initiatives such as this program that we are implementing. We have received a total number of 150 young people who applied for the Hackathon from the five corridors in Gauteng and the top performers will be absorbed at Microsoft and subsequently receive training as developers and ICT Engineers!”
Songezo Mbambisa Acting Group Head Customer and Service Relationship Management under Group ICT and Information Management City of Johannesburg highlighted that, “as part of ICT we offer tailor-made training for the youth such as coding, Artificial Intelligence including issues of Mobile App Development. The Digital Market Place empowers the youth providing them with the Youth Database platform that centralizes all their employment applications. We have the database that caters for individuals that require work in any specific field so that when something tangible comes, we are able to contact the applicants and place them accordingly. The youth database is an online application portal where you just submit your documents enabling a person to be on stand-by cutting the tedious walk-ins of job seeking practice of physically handing over one’s CV and particulars. Concluded Mambisa.
The Hackathon Series has been rolled out across all five corridors of Gauteng, with the Provincial Finale Hackathon will take place from 29 to 30 June 2026, followed by the official Closing Ceremony and Awards Presentation on 1 July 2026.
Jerry Sokhupe
Soweto Sunrise News
