Overview:
Two Haitian tech organizations are launching the primary Ayiti AI Hackathon, from November 28 to 30, to coach and join younger innovators utilizing synthetic intelligence to create native options for Haiti’s challenges in sectors like schooling, well being, and agriculture. Successful groups will obtain tech gear, software program licenses, Software Programming Interface (API) credit, and entry to a community of mentors and professionals for continued collaboration.
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haiti’s rising tech scene is getting extra enhance this yr as Syntax Studio and Akademi, put together to host the primary Ayiti AI Hackathon, going down Nov. 28-30 in Port-au-Prince. The three-day competitors goals to equip younger builders with sensible AI expertise and encourage them to design progressive, native options to Haiti’s structural issues.
The 2 organizations are a part of a brand new technology of Haitian tech innovators which might be stepping as much as sort out the nation’s greatest challenges — from agriculture to schooling — by synthetic intelligence.
“We wished to create an area the place younger Haitian expertise might perceive, experiment with, and construct utilizing AI, whether or not fixing challenges in agriculture, healthcare, or schooling, primarily based on their very own realities,” Kenley Jean, founder and coordinator of Ayiti AI, stated to The Haitian Instances.
Ayiti AI Hackathon comes as synthetic intelligence more and more shapes younger folks’s lives worldwide. Organizers, comparable to Jean and Castelline Tilus, founding father of Akademi, say the hackathon will assist place Haitian builders as lively contributors to technological innovation — difficult the concept AI is restricted to main firms or elite analysis facilities.
“We wished to create an area the place younger Haitian expertise might perceive, experiment with, and construct utilizing AI, whether or not fixing challenges in agriculture, healthcare, or schooling, primarily based on their very own realities.”
The organizers of Ayiti AI Hackathon
Hackathons have developed past mere code‑sprints—they’re now international catalysts for youth innovation and social influence. Up to now few years, worldwide competitions such because the Global AI Hackathon drew more than 1,300 members from over 80 international locations, 60 % from creating economies, all working to construct AI options tied to the United Nations Sustainable Improvement Targets. On this context, the Ayiti AI Hackathon—set for Nov. 28‑30 in Port‑au‑Prince—marks a primary for Haiti. Relatively than outsourcing expertise, Haiti positions younger Haitian builders as creators of house‑grown AI options to the nation’s urgent issues. By coaching members in native languages, providing entry to mentors, and concentrating on themes like schooling, well being and agriculture, organizers comparable to Jean and Castelline Tilus, founding father of Akademi, say the hackathon will assist place Haitian builders as lively contributors to technological innovation.
Constructing Haiti’s subsequent tech technology
In preparation for the occasion, members will attend 4 Saturdays of on-line coaching overlaying AI fundamentals and trendy improvement instruments — accessible even to rookies. In the course of the hackathon, ten chosen groups will work from Port-au-Prince with entry to dependable web, electrical energy, meals, and mentors.
“No interruptions, no obligatory check-ins, simply targeted constructing time resulting in the ultimate pitch on Sunday afternoon,” says Jean, founding father of Syntax Studio. “It’s intense, however that’s the purpose: see what they will construct in 48 hours in an surroundings the place they will simply consider their code.”
Organizers hope the occasion will function a hub for AI democratization in Haiti, making certain that younger folks have entry to instruments and information usually concentrated in massive economies.
“The actual influence will come if these 48 hours change into the place to begin for steady follow — builders who proceed studying, coding, connecting, and maybe launching their very own tasks,” stated Jean.
Innovation rooted in Haitian realities
The thought was born from a easy conviction that synthetic intelligence shouldn’t be reserved for main technological powers. It should as an alternative be democratized so that everybody can entry and use it to work extra effectively and shortly based on their wants. The organizers acknowledge that the nation is filled with brilliant younger minds, but many lack alternatives and platforms to specific themselves by know-how.
Members will design tasks underneath six themes: well being and well-being, generative AI, schooling, artwork and tradition, neighborhood options, and open innovation. Every theme displays points Haitians face every day, offering a framework for creativity grounded in native expertise.
Potential tasks embrace Creole-language medical assistants, sensible instruments for small companies, multilingual content material mills, and literacy platforms. Different concepts vary from konpa– and rara-inspired music mills to neighborhood platforms for catastrophe alerts and cultural preservation.
“No interruptions, no obligatory check-ins, simply targeted constructing time resulting in the ultimate pitch on Sunday afternoon,”
Kenley Jean, founding father of Syntax Studio.
“These themes aren’t theoretical. Every one displays actual challenges and alternatives that Haitians face on daily basis,” organizers stated. “The purpose is to point out that when used correctly, AI can change into a sensible and concrete device, not only a fashionable buzzword.”
Related initiatives, comparable to these led by BANJ, have additionally sought to equip younger Haitians with digital and entrepreneurial expertise — signaling a rising ecosystem for know-how and innovation within the nation.
Rewards for innovation and collaboration
On Nov. 30, groups will current their prototypes to a jury of specialists from Haiti’s tech sector. Judges will consider every challenge primarily based on innovation, performance, and presentation — specializing in practical options with measurable influence.
“What we worth is a straightforward resolution that works higher than a fancy however unstable prototype, creativity and adaptation to the Haitian context, and the power to ship one thing concrete in 48 hours,” Jean stated.
Successful groups will obtain tech gear, software program licenses, Software Programming Interface (API) credit, and entry to a community of mentors and professionals for continued collaboration. Every participant may even be acknowledged throughout the Ayiti AI Hackathon neighborhood and its companions.
By way of this initiative, organizers hope to point out that know-how could be a power for inclusion, creativity, and social transformation — pushed by the ingenuity of Haiti’s youth.
“We hope that some members go away with greater than a prototype, a transparent imaginative and prescient of what they will construct, fundamental AI expertise to proceed, and a community of friends to collaborate with after the occasion,” Jean stated.