Nigerian women developers have built digital tools to address challenges ranging from flood warnings and loan-app verification to cybersecurity and access to healthcare information at the SheCode Africa Apify Hackathon.

The two-day hybrid programme brought together women and girls with engineering backgrounds to develop technology solutions to local problems.

Among the projects was a flood-warning system developed by Byte Queens, which uses publicly available weather forecasts to generate location-based alerts.

The system sends updates through WhatsApp in English, Pidgin, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa, including expected flood intensity, timing and suggested safety measures.

Another team, Data Divas, developed a tool that extracts information from the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to enable users to check whether a loan app has been approved or blacklisted.

Team Sentinel developed a tool for identifying potentially risky websites by examining domains, look-alike domains and certificate transparency information.
Other projects focused on healthcare, education, African history and culture, and market intelligence.

CareMap, for instance, sought to organise information on healthcare providers and services from public sources, while Story Vault was designed to make African historical and cultural information easier to research and trace to its sources.

MarketPlus Africa focused on helping prospective entrepreneurs research market prices and market saturation using listings from platforms including Jumia, TikTok and Jiji.

One of the judges, Mercy Makinde, said the projects were assessed partly on their ability to solve real-life problems and remain useful beyond the hackathon.

About 26 teams submitted entries, while 23 participated in the final programme. Data Divas emerged first, followed by Byte Queens and Sentinel.

A University of Lagos student and member of Data Divas, Oreoluwa Oluwasina, said the team planned to refine its loan-app verification tool, explore making it open source and develop additional tools.