TapTap Send Hackathon: Looking back on three days of innovation and mentorship at UCAC

From September 23 to 25, 2025, the Catholic University of Central Africa (UCAC) in Yaoundé hosted the "Back to School Grand Hackathon TapTap Send," an event initiated by Fatimatou Ousmanou Samba, entrepreneur and co-founder of TapTap Send Cameroon. More than 300 students aged 18 to 30 took part in this first-of-its-kind gathering, centered on digital innovation and youth employability. Over three days, hands-on workshops, coaching sessions, mentorship and team competitions followed one another, with a clear goal: helping young people turn their ideas into concrete projects and develop skills directly applicable to the professional world.

I was responsible for the event's logistics and branding, a role that had me involved well before the doors even opened.

Ahead of the event: communication strategy and contest launch

My contribution began before the event itself, taking part in drafting the hackathon's overall communication strategy: positioning, key messages and a distribution plan designed to reach as many students as possible and give the contest the visibility it deserved.

For the contest launch, I designed a dedicated website myself, built to centralize registrations and clearly lay out the rules, prize categories and event schedule. This tool served as the single entry point for the hundreds of candidates interested in taking part.

The challenge of building the teams

One of the major challenges of this hackathon was forming the working groups. With more than 300 participants of very diverse profiles, we had to avoid unbalanced teams, where some groups would end up concentrating the most sought-after skills at the expense of others.

To address this challenge, we used artificial intelligence to select the best profiles and distribute them into well-balanced groups, cross-referencing skill diversity to ensure maximum balance across teams. This approach allowed each group to benefit from a mix of complementary talents, fostering richer collaboration throughout the three days of competition.

Serving on the jury for the most viral video category

Beyond logistics and branding, I also sat on the jury responsible for judging one of the contest's flagship categories: the most viral video. The hackathon featured several prize categories, rewarding different forms of creativity and performance, including a top prize worth 1.5 million FCFA awarded to the team behind the most promising project.

Handling unexpected issues on the fly

As with any event of this scale, we ran into some difficulties with the delivery of certain product elements along the way. But thanks to the teams' responsiveness and tight coordination between logistics, communications and organization, everything ultimately went smoothly, with no impact on the participants' experience or on the three days running as planned.

A team effort above all

None of this would have been possible without a fantastic team, committed from the first day to the last. I want to warmly thank my colleagues Marinne Anavai, Aurélie Mengue and Chloé Olembe, project leads, whose energy and rigor carried the organization day after day; Vitus Ahanda, community manager, for his work on outreach and event visibility; and Landry Mah, graphic designer, for giving the hackathon a visual identity worthy of its ambition.

I would also like to thank Mrs. Fatimatou Ousmanou Samba, head of TapTap Send Cameroon, for the vision that made this event possible, as well as Fouad Dairou, country director at Sembe Agency, whose agency organized the event alongside TapTap Send. It was a pleasure to contribute, together, to a project so meaningful for Cameroonian youth.

A successful bet on Cameroonian youth

"This hackathon is much more than a simple competition, it is an act of faith in Cameroonian youth."

Free and inclusive, the TapTap Send hackathon gave hundreds of young people the chance to learn, experiment and stand out, in a spirit of equal opportunity. Having contributed to bringing this event to life, from the communication strategy all the way to the awards ceremony, remains an experience I am particularly proud of.