Final year Computer Science student, Charmaine Matsaudza won the award for the Most Creative Idea during a hackathon at the 10th World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum in Geneva, Switzerland.

The WSIS is the world’s largest annual gathering of the ‘ICT for development’ community and provides an opportunity for information exchange, knowledge creation and sharing. The forum identifies emerging trends and fostering partnership while taking into account the evolving information and knowledge societies.  

Charmaine Mutsaudza’s group went under the name PeerEd and included Godfrey Paradzayi from the Harare Institute of Technology and Isaac Gadzimbe from the University of Zimbabwe. They presented a prototype on “hacking solutions for lifelong learning and livelihoods” and received an award from International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Deputy Secretary-General Malcom Johnson.

Apart from winning this prestigious award, Charmaine Mutsaudza designed a Cholera incident mapping system which dictates cholera zones and allows for immediate response. Her application will be part of the student Innovations that will be presented during Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) at the NUST stand.

This year the forum celebrated its 10th anniversary under the theme “Information and Communication Technologies for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.”

The students’ participation in the forum was facilitated by the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology and Courier Services and the Postal and Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ).