Africa-Press – Uganda. The Cortex Hub has unveiled the launch of the MCP Hackathon Africa 2025, an expansive, continent-wide initiative aimed at embedding African languages, cultures, and priorities into the next generation of Artificial Intelligence.
Set to run across more than 40 cities from September to November 2025, this eight-week program will unite developers, researchers, startups, and students to create practical solutions using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). MCP is an emerging open standard that empowers applications to provide structured, locally relevant information to large language models. The hackathon will culminate in a grand continental showcase in Cape Town on November 11–12, 2025, where the finalists will present their innovations to a global audience of investors, incubators, and technology leaders.
This initiative is a strategic effort designed to ensure that Africa plays a pivotal role in shaping the infrastructure of Artificial General Intelligence. By contributing African languages, legal systems, and development priorities to MCP servers, participants will help safeguard the continent’s digital sovereignty and reduce reliance on closed, proprietary technologies.
Andile Ngcaba, Patron of The Cortex Hub, emphasized, “The Model Context Protocol is Africa’s opportunity to transition from being consumers of AI to becoming the creators of the very standards that govern it. By coding MCP servers for our towns and cities, participants will be embedding African contexts, cultures, and priorities into the evolution of AI itself.”
Participants can join local hubs in over 40 cities across the continent, including Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, Mauritius), West Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal), Central Africa (Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo), East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia), and North Africa (Morocco, Egypt). They will have access to boot camps, mentorship, peer collaboration, and technical resources, including starter code repositories and MCP documentation to support their builds. The innovation tracks will tackle sectors such as telecommunications, financial technology, agriculture, logistics, and public services. These tracks will address practical challenges, from empowering smallholder farmers with real-time information to strengthening secure payment systems and designing logistics platforms that promote cross-border trade.
The MCP Hackathon Africa 2025 is supported by a range of prestigious technology partners, including TESPOK, Seacom, Mauritius Telecom, CSquared, Solcon Capital, and Datacentrix. These organizations share a collective commitment to advancing Africa’s digital future and promoting innovation across the continent.
Key Sponsors’ Remarks:
Ahmed Mohamed, Group CEO of Datacentrix, commented, “By coding MCP servers for our towns, you’re not merely writing software—you’re inscribing African contexts into the very fabric of AI’s evolution. At Datacentrix, we believe that responsible leadership in the digital age requires us to reimagine business and society through the lens of technology. MCP represents a significant step toward ethical, contextualized AI built with Africa’s realities in mind. By taking ownership at the protocol layer, we can move from being mere consumers to creators, embedding resilience, innovation, and our collective values into the core of global AI.”
Alpheus Mangale, Group CEO of Seacom, expressed, “In this new frontier where AI evolves from code to consciousness, the youth of Africa stand as pivotal architects. Your participation in this pan-African hackathon, building Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, goes beyond technical labor. It’s the creation of cognitive infrastructure that will bind real-time intelligence to the lived experiences of our cities, transforming abstract algorithms into contextually grounded knowledge.”
Ian Paterson, CEO of CSquared, shared, “We are entering the era of AI Agents, Agentic AI, and Super Agents. The internet as we know it will never be the same. AI Agents and Model Context Protocols will drive AI and the connectivity ecosystem forward, shaping the future of technology.”
Pramod Venkatesh, CEO of Solcon Capital, stated, “As we experience the explosion of Agentic AI, it’s crucial that Africa builds its own sovereign AI capabilities to ensure technological independence, security, and cultural relevance. Model Context Protocols (MCPs) will play a crucial role in enabling African-built models and AI agents to access diverse local data sources, integrate seamlessly across systems, and deliver context-rich insights. Solcon Capital is proud to sponsor the upcoming MCP AI Hackathon, bringing together innovators, developers, and researchers to lay the foundations of Africa’s sovereign AI future.”
Dr. Fiona Asonga, CEO of TESPOK, remarked, “This hackathon provides a fantastic opportunity for the youth of Kenya and East Africa to test their skills in Artificial Intelligence, including building AI Agents, Agentic AI, and MCPs. The future of AI in Africa will be shaped by this generation of talented individuals.”
Veemal Gungadin, CEO of Mauritius Telecom, emphasized, “At this pivotal moment in the digital era, real-time Artificial Intelligence through AI Agents represents the frontier of human-machine symbiosis. This MCP hackathon, spanning 40 African cities, is a call to the younger generation equipped with local insight and acumen. They are poised to write the next chapter of AI’s story, where context is not an afterthought but the very foundation of its vitality. Africa must not be a follower, but a leader in the AI space.”
About MCP Hackathon Africa 2025
The MCP Hackathon Africa 2025 will span more than 40 cities across the continent from September to November 2025. Organized by The Cortex Hub, the hackathon is supported by a range of technology partners, including Datacentrix, Seacom, CSquared, Solcon Capital, Mauritius Telecom, and TESPOK.
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