More than 150 students at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) signed up for a hackathon run by South African mobile operator Vodacom and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the first milestone in an AI partnership announced in July 2026.
Vodacom said on 12 October 2026 that the AI for Africa Hackathon Challenge took place at Vodacom World in Johannesburg, South Africa. Students built AI solutions for problems in education, health, maternal health, community safety, gender-based violence and femicide, youth employment, accessibility, water security and agriculture.
From master’s students to undergraduates
The partnership’s first project focused on master’s students in UJ’s Centre for Applied Data Science. The hackathon extends it to undergraduate and master’s students.
“Building Africa’s AI capabilities requires investment in people as well as technology,” said Charlotte Kepadisa, Managing Executive of Big Data, AI and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) at Vodacom Group.
Research on telecom cyber defence
Vodacom said the wider partnership includes co-designed learning programmes, postgraduate research and industry mentorship, with AWS providing cloud, data and AI resources.
Two research strands are under way. UJ master’s students are working on autonomous AI systems that could detect, analyse and respond to cyber threats across telecoms networks, and on blockchain-based approaches to digital identity management and preventing identity theft.
The partnership aims to supply job-ready AI and data science talent in South Africa. Our earlier piece on how AI could widen African education’s gaps covers the education side of that challenge. Meanwhile, the African Development Bank has offered free AI courses to African civil servants.
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