Microsoft announces winners in their LEAP Engineering Acceleration Program

Microsoft has announced winners for its Leap Hackathon for women in technology as part of the LEAP Engineering Acceleration Program. The event aimed to increase technology skills, facilitate learning through challenges as well as strengthen the place of women in the technology sector. It is focused on solutions in the agricultural and health sectors.

The LEAP Engineering Acceleration Program is a 16-week program which was launched to increase diversity within Microsoft. The program provides real world experience through development and project management apprenticeships and combines traditional classroom learning with hands-on projects.

32 Female hackers were identified to participate in the hackathon using a strict recruitment process which helped gauge the abilities of the applicants through 2 rounds of evaluation of the applications. Participants of the hackathon received Azure credits while the overall winning group was awarded prizes.

The winners, The BugSlayers, took centre stage with their innovative AgRight presentation. AgRight is a web application that uses Microsoft AI (Azure Custom Vision) for pest and disease prediction. The app can also predict harvest time, connects farmers to buyers and monitors farm activities. The people behind the project are; Clara Nashipai, Sylvia Achach, Rosianah Musyoka and Bethany Jepchumba.

Microsoft will work with the winning group on an ongoing internship program where they will be mentored and helped to further build and develop their solution and skills.

The participants were as follows;