Egypt hosts first Metaverse Hackathon

The Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (TIEC), an affiliate of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), has announced the launch of the first Metaverse Hackathon at Egypt’s CREATIVA Innovation Hubs and Egypt Makes Electronics Labs (EME).

The ibTIECarMetaverse@CREATIVA hackathon aims to inspire and encourage young Egyptian youth from various governorates to develop innovative solutions by utilising and developing Metaverse applications that address local pressing challenges, while also contributing to the acceleration of digital transformation in society.

The hackathon consists of ten Egyptian governorates: Cairo, Alexandria, Mansoura, Menoufia, Ismailia, Minya, Assiut, Qena, Suhaj, and Aswan.

The hackathon is taking place from February 15th to June 15th, 2022, with a focus on the use of technologies that contribute to the development of the Metaverse, including technologies used to build applications and solutions directly (GameFi -SocialFi -NFT -DAO/DAC -GPT) or indirectly (any product/service based upon emerging technologies with direct use in enhancing the Metaverse experience).

The hackathon welcomes unique ideas that use AR/VR/MR/XR, 3D Modeling & Animation, Virtual Beings & Digitally-Created Humans; Computer Vision & Spatial Computing NFTs and Blockchain NLP; Sensory Wearables and Immersive Devices; Human-Machine Interaction, ML/AI, IoT technologies.

The program which comes in light of ITIDA’s efforts to boost innovation and entrepreneurial culture aims to encourage future generations to create and develop innovative solutions. In addition, the hackathon aims to enhance the role of Egyptian universities as a hub for creativity and innovation-based entrepreneurship in Egypt. The program is open to students, grads, faculty members, and researchers in ICT-related colleges, in addition to entrepreneurs in the ICT field.

The winning teams will be awarded cash prizes of a total amount of EGP 750k in addition to having the priority to join TIEC’s and Creativa’s programs, including acceleration, incubation, consultation, mentorship, and networking programs. 

All participating teams will get access to the Electronics Innovation Hubs and CREATIVA Innovation Hubs, where all the facilities are made available to accommodate their work needs. 

Projects’ selection and evaluation criteria are based on 5 factors: the Novelty of idea; Idea Profitability (Target/expected market size and potential); Impact of the idea at the local/national/global level; Teamwork (the technical and managerial ability and skills of the team); and Prototype Maturity.