Richard Okyere-Fosu applauds Yango’s hackathon

The Director General of the National Information Technology Agency (NITA), Richard Okyere-Fosu, has lauded the efforts of ride-hailing service Yango and data science competition platform Zindi for their collaboration to address Ghana’s mobility issues.

Representing Communications and Digitalisation Minister Ursula Owusu-Ekuful at the 2024 Accra Mobility Prediction Hackathon, Okyere-Fosu highlighted the government’s enthusiasm for such forward-thinking initiatives.

The event, hosted at the University of Ghana Computing Systems (UGCS) on Saturday (23 November) and powered by Yango, brought together some of Ghana’s brightest young minds to craft machine learning solutions for real-world transport challenges.

“The fact that the minister has nominated me to represent her shows you the government is interested in these developments,” Okyere-Fosu stated. “Hackathons are important—it’s an avenue for us to bring students together.”

The hackathon challenged participants to develop a machine learning model capable of predicting average speeds on major Accra roads at different times of the day.

The stakes included a prize pool of US$900 (1st place: US$450, 2nd place: US$270 and 3rd place: US$180), with US$100 earmarked for the best undergraduate participant.

Okyere-Fosu emphasised the significance of the competition, describing it as a model example of academia and industry collaborating to solve practical issues. 

“Here you have a serious industry and academia collaboration to actually solve real-life issues,” he said. “We are dealing with mobility issues and we believe that technology can be put to bare to address these issues.”

Beyond the competition itself, Okyere-Fosu touched on the government’s broader ICT policy, which prioritises youth development and digital entrepreneurship. 

“Whoever wins their solution could be adopted by Yango or any of the ride-hailing companies,” he said. 

“From that point, we’ve got to scale them and again, another pillar of the new ICT policy is entrepreneurship, digital entrepreneurship. So Ghana is looking to also support our students.”

He also praised Yango’s leadership in cultivating talent through events like the hackathon. 

“So we are making sure that we just don’t leave it here, but it is not government alone that can do this. That’s why private partnership is important; we are unearthing the talent.” Okyere-Fosu noted.

“Yango through this medium is unearthing talent; now it’s up to the entrepreneurs to also take it up and then scale it up so that it can be used.”

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