Mock Hackathon

The UNLOKINNO Trans-Sahara Hackathon – 2nd Edition is a Pan-African Climate Tech innovation challenge focused on identifying and accelerating the next generation of African innovators developing practical solutions to climate change and environmental challenges. This years addition, we are joined by our ecosystem partner The Kenya National Innovation Agency (KeNIA) and our innovation platform partner Wazoku.

Under the theme “Innovating Beyond Borders: Building Africa’s Sustainable Future,” the challenge brings together students, researchers, entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and multidisciplinary teams from across Africa to develop solutions with the potential for meaningful, scalable impact.

The challenge focuses on four interconnected areas of Climate Tech and sustainable innovation:

• Renewable Energy & Sustainable Materials
• Climate Innovation & Green Chemistry
• Circular Economy, Water & Sanitation
• AgriTech & Food Systems.

Participants are encouraged to tackle real-world climate challenges through technology, science, entrepreneurship, and cross-sector collaboration. Solutions may address a specific challenge within one thematic area, while innovations that combine technologies or disciplines to solve complex climate and sustainability challenges are particularly encouraged.

The Trans-Sahara Hackathon is designed to help move promising Climate Tech ideas toward real-world application, identifying innovations that can be developed into practical, scalable, and sustainable solutions. The programme seeks to discover high-potential innovators, strengthen collaboration across Africa, and create pathways for promising solutions to progress from early-stage concepts toward market-ready innovations and ventures. Whether you are developing a new clean-energy technology, using AI to address climate challenges, creating solutions for sustainable agriculture or water management, developing green chemistry applications, or rethinking how resources are produced and consumed, the Trans-Sahara Hackathon provides a platform to turn ambitious Climate Tech ideas into solutions for Africa’s sustainable future.

More About our Partners

Wazoku is a global innovation platform that helps organisations tap into collective intelligence — human and synthetic — to solve complex challenges and create measurable value. Innocentive, the world's largest open innovation ecosystem (1m+ solvers, 250k+ solutions, 100k+ verified solution providers) plus Wazoku's Ecosystem Operating System turns problem-solving into a repeatable, data-driven discipline. Find out more at wazoku.com and innocentive.com.

The Kenya National Innovation Agency (KeNIA) is a State Corporation established under the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Act, No. 28 of 2013 under the Ministry of Education. The core mandate of the Agency is to develop and manage the National Innovation System. The Agency is therefore responsible for co-ordination, promotion and regulation of the National Innovation System. Working with partners, KeNIA strengthens interrelationships between actors in order to promote innovation and enterprise development out of research and ideas. From supporting the identification, recording and protection of innovative ideas to coordinating the establishment and implementation of appropriate policies, standards, processes, infrastructure, and partnerships to nurture the innovative ideas. The agency also works with partners to ensure appropriate prioritization, relevant capacity development, innovation recognition and publication of the same. Learn more at https://kenia.go.ke/.