Can hackathons help foster data skills in the Global South?
In the aquamarine waters off Kenya’s eastern coast, fishing nets often accidentally ensnare endangered sea turtles. A local conservation group has spent years recording these encounters in a sprawling archive of data. Yet much of it remains unused. The authors propose a creative solution: hackathons, a competitive activity that has gained popularity across STEM fields because it challenges participants to quickly develop solutions to real-world problems.