A Cross-Continent Hackathon
Collaborations, Creations & Community
We recently held a Code Blossom Full-Stack Hackathon. We could not be prouder of our participants who collaborated globally to make this happen.
Alice Musukwa, our Lead Africa and organizer of this exciting event, tells us more about it:
From 19th June to 25th June, we held our first Hackathon for 2025 here at Code Blossom. It was my first hackathon ever to participate in, but also to organize since I started my journey here as a mentor. Coincidentally, it was also just the second since the inception of the organization. Undoubtedly, I was filled with a wide range of emotions and feelings that varied from excitement, anxiety, apprehension, and fear. Mainly because, as I said, it was my first time organizing one, so I was bombarded by the usual chorus of the insecurity family of what if I don’t do this right, what if I mess up the whole thing. As well as being the first time we were diving into cross-regional collaboration. Participants from Africa (Malawi and Kenya) were paired with participants from Asia (the Philippines).
With all these stakes, it was either going to be an epic hit or a miss on our part. I am glad that it was the former. We had the opening event on 19th June, where participants were given guidelines, goals, and a vision of the hackathon. Participants were given the option of choosing a partner of their choice; otherwise, one was assigned to them. Bootstrap templates that ranged in themes from educational, booking orders, and e-commerce were provided, but if a pair wanted to go another route, they were free to do so. As long as their choices aligned with the Code Blossom curriculum. Having observed several hackathons in my time, one thing that always made me fear participating in one was the amplification of certain participants and projects. This always made me feel less confident, especially early on in my developer journey. In case I wasn’t picked as one of the top people, which I feared would happen, and understood the impact it had on me.
Whilst having discussions about the goal/purpose of our hackathon, I was glad that it was made very clear that the hackathon was about highlighting the power of collaboration. As well as real-life experience of working in teams. Such that it was clear that each and every individual was equal. With each participant receiving a participatory badge to complement this. To be fair, on the day of the opening ceremony, I think I was just as nervous as the participants, if not more, but also filled with excitement to see the end results. In total, we had eleven groups developing eleven beautiful projects that included a package delivery web application (Swift Logistics), a student dashboard (Likoma Institute of Innovation), and a nail booking app.
As I mentioned above, this hackathon gave rise to cross-continent pairings that, for some of them, were the first time partnering up with someone. But learning to deal with time zone differences, hence my anxiety. But I was so blown away and humbled by the participants’ work ethic as well as creativity. Which wasn’t a surprise when, in our hackathon survey, participants named their peers as the best resource during the hackathon. When closing ceremony day came, it was a bittersweet session as it marked the ending but also showcased of creative and innovative solutions worked on by these brilliant women. So, it was no surprise that the closing ceremony, which was an hour-long event, ended up being longer as the enthusiasm to showcase the projects was complemented by all the other participants staying to watch their peers present too.
In the end, this hackathon became a showcase of Code Blossom’s strategy of creating a learning platform that also fosters community growth. The hackathon was bombarded with words like amazing, inspirational, and awesome as its descriptive experience. Leveraging our aim to nurture Full-Stack developers who are well-skilled, empowered, and impact-oriented.
Here are a few impressions of projects that were developed during this hackathon:
