Growing in more directions. From the 12th of January to the 30th of January, the Financial Innovation Hub in collaboration with The Cortex Hub kicked-off the UCT-Cortex Hub FinTech Lab with our inaugural FinTech Summer School Programme in East London, Eastern Cape. The FinTech Lab is sponsored by the FirstRand Foundation.
The Summer School programme included a two week bootcamp where the first week was on Open Banking and the second week on Technical Development where participants were taught full stack development and exposed to specialised topics such as mobile application development, Blockchain and Data Science. The final week culminated in a 5 day hackathon where teams were expected to produce a working POC applying a open banking via a Hub-built Open Banking sandbox with simulated data, a business plan on their idea and a pitch deck. The hackathon theme:
Teams were required to present in a mock pitch to an industry panel, this time the Investment Committee of Convergence Partners, global private equity firm based in South Africa, giving valuable feedback before their final pitch the next day. The final pitch were judged by representatives of Cortex Hub and the Financial Innovation Hub. Made up of the Chair of the Cortex Hub board, Nico Muka, Lunga Feni, Partnerships lead at the Cortex Hub, Dr Allan Davids, Director of the Financial Innovation Hub, And Takunda Chirema, Senior Software Engineer at the Financial Innovation Hub, Nobulali Myataza, ESD Specialist at the Cortex Hub and Anda Ngcaba, Innovation Director of the Financial Innovation Hub.
Prizes include Takealot vouchers of amounts R5000, R2500 and R1000 for split equally amongst first, second and third teams. Top placing teams are eligible to apply to the GenesisBloc Launchpad pre-incubator with their hackathon idea for the Financial Inclusion Stream.
Our first programme acted as a pilot, accepting 21 undergraduates or alumni of Walter Sisulu University, University of Fort Hare, Nelson Mandela University and Rhodes as well as Cortex Hub entrepreneurs. We hope to grow this number to reach more talented inviduals in the eastern cape in our Next winter school edition of the programme, in June 2026.
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 Hub). 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 Financial Innovation Hub). 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 Financial Innovation Hub newsletter, our LinkedIn or partner with us if you would like to be a sponsor.