14 NEMISA Datathon 2022 in collaboration with the TPC The Technopreneurship Centre (TPC) hosted the final activity of 2022 with a National Data Science Innovation Hackathon (Datathon) in partnership with the National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa (NEMISA) – an entity of the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT) under the leadership of Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni. The NEMISA Innovation Datathon was hosted physically and virtually in five provinces: Gauteng, Mpumalanga, North West, Limpopo, and Free State provinces. TPC was the leading partner of the NEMISA Datathon in Gauteng Province, which took place at UJ’s Auckland Park Campus from 25 to 27 November 2022. The theme of the Datathon was “Scaling data skills for multidisciplinary impact”. It aimed to bring together government, academia, industry, organised labour, and civil society to deliberate on how big data and its applications could improve decision-making and policy adoption. Head of the TPC, Mr Ronny Mabokela, said “As the head of the TPC, I am thrilled by the incredible work of the centre. Our students are working tirelessly to develop innovative solutions and to showcase their talent. The centre has done excellent work, to the extent that its success continues to encourage even our first-year students to start participating in this type of innovation hackathon with the aim of upskilling themselves”. A total of 430 people registered for this event, with Gauteng Province having the largest number of participants (210) and the most teams. Congratulations to The A Team (Kenan Kasongo, Malebo Moleleki, Sanah Rasethaba, Aaron Kibambe, Ibrahim Lukombe), a group of third-year Business Information Technology students from the Department of Applied Information Systems, who were declared the overall winner of the Gauteng NEMISA Datathon 2022. They developed an AI-driven chatbot called Falsify, which is integrated with WhatsApp to detect and prevent the spread of fake news on social media. The aim of the solution is to prevent defamation of character, harm to a company’s reputation, and related social issues that could be caused by fake news. Team Digital Surfers (Olatomiwa Akinlaja and Keneilwe Goeieman) were declared the first runner-up of the NEMISA Datathon. They developed an interactive dashboard that focuses on education, job opportunities, and skills development. The competition’s next stage will take place in Durban, Kwa-Zulu Natal in February 2023, when the winners from the respective provinces will compete for R100,000 towards the improvement of their solution and the incubation of the winning solution. The CEO of NEMISA, Mr Trevor Rammitlwa, strongly suggested in his opening address that, as an organisation, NEMISA was delighted to partner with the University of Johannesburg, and that they would continue to do so, as the relationship has been extremely valuable. Prof. Mercy Mpinganjira, Director of SCiiS, said: “We really appreciate the support and collaboration from NEMISA. This is an excellent opportunity for our students to acquire the necessary skills to disrupt the job market. Furthermore, we want our students to excel and develop solutions that can solve societal challenges”.
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