Back bigger and better! This year's week-long event welcome students from across the entire UCT community, from first-year undergraduates to postdoctoral researchers. The 4-day Bootcamp, held in June 2025, featured sessions led by Allan Davids (Senior Lecturer at UCT), Sabine Schaller (Lead Engineer at Interledger), and Takunda Chirema (Technical Specialist at FinHub). The program covered topics such as payments, full-stack development, and the Interledger Protocol, offering both practical and theory-based content.
The event concluded with a hackathon on the 5th and 6th days, where this year around 100 participants formed 16 student teams to bootstrap a proof of concept and pitch their startup idea to a panel of industry judges. Teams competed for a prize pool of R65,000 sponsored by the Interledger Foundation.
A special shoutout to the Interledger Foundation as always for bringing to Cape Town their whole team of senior developers, product designers and product leads who volunteered their expertise throughout the full 7-day event.
The week-long event welcomed students from across the entire UCT community, from first-year undergraduates to postdoctoral researchers. The 4-day Bootcamp, held in June 2024, featured sessions led by Allan Davids (Senior Lecturer at UCT), Sabine Schaller (Lead Engineer at Interledger), and Takunda Chirema (Technical Specialist at FinHub). The program covered topics such as payments, full-stack development, and the Interledger Protocol, offering both practical and theory-based content.
The event concluded with a hackathon on the 5th and 6th days, where about 40 participants formed 9 student teams to bootstrap a proof of concept and pitch their startup idea to a panel of industry-based judges. Teams competed for a prize pool of R65,000 sponsored by the Interledger Foundation
Hosted by the Nedbank Group Technology and Payments divisions, the Payments Innovation Pitch-Off Competition took place at the School of Economics, University of Cape Town, as part of Nedbank’s guest lecture on Payments Innovation.
Following an open call to the UCT start-up ecosystem , six finalists were selected by the NedBank to present their innovative solutions to a panel comprising experts from NedBank Group Technology & Payments and the UCT Financial Innovation Hub Team. Selected pitch candidates were those who have potential to create meaningful and lasting change in society through leveraging Open-Banking APIs.
Prizes included R50,000 in Avo vouchers, R50,000 in cash shared among the top three pitches, and exclusive mentorship hours with Nedbank executives. The event drew strong participation from UCT students and staff, fostering collaboration between academia and industry while showcasing the creative talent within the university community.
Led by Gary Lu, these Algorand Developer Workshops were held in April, 2023 for six sessions over two weeks in both online and in-person formats. These were entry-level, highly-practical sessions where the aim is to bootstrap potential hackathon participants and beginners looking to get coding on the Algorand blockchain.
Links to the slides used in each session are included each video. See this GitHub repository for instructions on how to access the practical components of the workshops. Participants were expected to code along to complete the smart contracts with the workshop lead in GitLab.
The Workshops were followed by a two-month long hackathon where all students affiliated with the University of Cape Town were invited to participate. 15 teams participated and 5 teams were shortlisted to pitch at the closing ceremony. The top three teams combined received a total of R235,000 in prize money comprising of bursaries and cash sponsored by the Algorand Foundation.
We hold at least one hackathon annually with our donors or external partners generally in conjunction with a workshop series focusing on the specific technology. Pitch competitions are held annually in October which are open-call opportunities for anyone in the UCT community with a startup or nascent idea who would like to pitch it to the event's sponsor.
Keep informed on these events by subscribing to the FinHub newsletter, our LinkedIn or partner with us if you would like to be a sponsor.