The winners of the National Sanitation Hackathon are known. These are Icesspool and Nsuo, two start-ups that have developed solutions to improve sanitation services and waste management in Ghana. They participated in the best mobile application competition launched jointly by the World Bank and the Ghanaian Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources.
The latter states that Icesspool should provide a full service chain for liquid waste management, including sludge disposal, monitoring compliance with industrial facility regulations, health and safety standards for sump emptyers, and customer service cost management.
The start-up Nsuo has created a platform for water supply and plastic waste recycling. Users will have access to software and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code to order water and request the collection of their plastic waste.
A $50,000 reward
Start-ups Icesspool and Nsuo won $30,000 and $20,000 respectively. The award should help these young companies to improve their applications and link them to the public service.
The National Sanitation Hackathon was launched in 2018. That same year, 30 young people participated in the competition. Among them, three had been rewarded for their mobile applications. This competition is organised with funding from the World Bank.
This initiative should encourage digital actors in Ghana who are particularly interested in waste management in large cities. A few months ago, the start-up Jumeni Technologies launched the mobile application “Jumeni”. On the street, it allows the waste collector to communicate quickly with the central office to receive information on the route to be taken, for example. For households, the application makes it easier to pay for the waste-collection company’s services using a bank card or “mobile banking”.
Jean Marie Takouleu