Geekulcha, a platform for young talent in the Information and Communications (ICT) exists to create and enable platforms for Innovation and Creativity. The organisation has built a national footprint working with all spheres or government, industries, academia and community development based organisations to build tech and digital skills in all parts of the country.
“It’s where “young, skilled, creative and ambitious tech minds” meet through its various initiatives to share knowledge, develop skills, and network with industry leaders. Building a Geek Culture of Sustainable Innovation”, says Geekulcha Digital Officer Fikile Mlangeni.
Profiling and Celebrating Local Geek Culture
For the fourth year running, Geekulcha named the Top 15 Young Geeks of South Africa to mark the beginning of Youth Month. This year, Geekulcha honors young people that are Enterprising Mankind.
The focus is on celebrating young geeks who are building solutions that focus on improving society and encouraging inclusivity. The #Top15YoungGeeks initiative was created by Geekulcha back in 2017 to showcase and assess the health and state of geek culture or digital capacity in South Africa. “This initiative also exposes young talent to the corporate world for work and collaborative opportunities”, added Mlangeni.
Nominations were open between January and April 2020, and the Top 15 Young Geeks were then selected, after careful assessment of the Top 25 Young Geeks selected by the adjudicators in the first round of the selection process. The adjudication panel is composed of the Geekulcha EXCO, including the Geekulcha Student Society leaders and our public sector partners.
In association with ITWeb herewith 2020 Top 15 Young Geeks
After nominations, the Geekulcha team and partner organizations made a selection of the worthiest Geeks. The panel included Mr Mukondli Dumela (2018 Top 15 Young Geek and founder of Xitsonga.org ), Ms Lenah Kitenge (Community Analyst from HERE Technologies), Mr Muzi Ntombela (CIO of the CPSI), Mr Mokakatla Masekela (ENIGMATIC NATION GLOBAL) and from Geekulcha, Ms Fikile Mlangeni, Mr Gabriel Cassim (Open Source Lead) and Mr Mixo Ngoveni (CEO).
Tsitsi Primrose Marote
Co-owner of Guardian Health.
She is also thriving in a male-dominated industry and team as a Data Scientist and Data Engineer. She is also very passionate about teaching and has been tutoring Mathematics for free for a couple of years.
Nhlanhla Christopher Mahlangu
Data scientist at Ignition Group
He mentored high school students with programming and graphics designs – for the first time ever, they won 3rd place. He also won the best speaker award at the Water Research Commission Hackathon for a Data Science presentation
Tumelo Baloyi
Founder, TDIGITAL
Tumelo has many years of experience in deploying WiFi networks all over South Africa and the many years building solutions for both corporate and individuals. He also founded DotAfro which is a pro-black social networking site, CharOn- a cell tower protection app and Thuso App- an app that helps survivors communicate after a natural disaster.
Karabo Maboka
Data Science Student at Deviare
Coming from in terms of Information and Data Science, Karabo is passionate about working with computers and ICT in general, he is very looking forward to the digital age or the fourth industrial revolution we are about to enter into, because he believes it will have a meaningful impact to the South African youth, drive economic growth and address the unemployment problems we have in the country, because it is a sector which has lots of employment opportunities that are untapped.
Keoikantse Botlholo
Founder and Software Developer at Kids In ICT
Kids In ICT is an ICT skills-transfer organization to kids from disadvantaged communities, and tech start-up founder, Codetelligent. Her platform www.codetelligent.co.za is set on training unskilled youth 18 years to 30 years with the in-demand skills and helps them get into tech training institutions (placed 4 so far into CapaCiTi, just under 2 months of training).
Farisani Nonyana
Software Developer at Mediro-ICT
Coding Mentor at GirlCode. She volunteered to teach high school learners how to code in various organizations such as GirlCode, Nunnovation, Social Code just to name a few. Farisani has been contributing to the SA tech ecosystem by volunteering her time to teach high school learners to code.
Madimetja Simon Sekele
Software Developer at Intelligent Systems Innovators South Africa
He Led the Team at Tshwane University of Technology and put together the KASI Hackathon. He also built a Twitter Bot embedded eHealth system that allowed patients to book supplements and appointments.
Raesetje Bonjo Sefala
Wits University student in Data Science
She is a young innovator and has worked on several projects with multiple institutions including the CSIR and the University of Chicago. She worked with the city of Jakarta Indonesia as part of the Data Science for social good fellowship.
Gift Mogeni
Software Developer at Thola Digital
He is Junior Cyber Security Engineer at Puleng Technologies, and founder of Accelerated Learning Technologies. Gift created simfind.co.za that helps people find their missing ones and it’s running on an apple store and it’s getting much attraction even outside the borders of south africa.
Vanessa Sekati
Co-founder of VT NetSecure
She is also a SOC Analyst, Network monitoring, and End-User Computing Tutor at the University Of Johannesburg. Vanessa started VT Netsecure with a mission to educate people on how to avoid phishing attempts, protect their personal information and protect themselves from cyber security attacks.
Peter Moremi
Software Developer at Peter Tshwane
He is the Founder of the Fundmyfees.co.za platform. A project that is giving indebted or financially excluded university students to meet donors online and assist them in paying their fees. Peter also has a web development company called Hop.
Kutlwano Tshatiwa
A 14-year old Software Developer attending Gabonewe High School
He coded an Android application called Math Geek from his Android phone – helping learners who struggle with mathematics. He also participated in the Eskom Expo For Young Scientists ISF 2019 and won a ‘highly commended project award’.
Nangamso Tshwete
Network specialist at Amdocs (Telkom)
She was awarded the best developer at the Girl code hackathon, and has been given recognition all over the country by some of the biggest tech companies including but not limited to DVT, Entelect just to name a few.
Dale Deacon
Founder, R&D Director, Lecturer, Advisor at WeAreVR JOZI
He started the WeAreVR JOZI & WeAreVR AFRICA communities to coordinate the education and collaboration of designers and developers in the fields of VR, AR, and 360 videos, which today spans 4 cities across Africa. He lectured modules of the University of Johannesburg’s VR short learning program and established UJ’s own VR Lab
Lyth Brown
Chief Business Officer of Qubit Solutions.
He has been involved in great initiatives including the Global Legal Hackathon and Spaanify – a gamified challenge-based platform connecting job seekers and employers.
About Geekulcha
Geekulcha as a platform has over 15 600 young techies across Africa, exposing young talent to the
corporate world for work and collaborative opportunities are one of the key focus areas of the
organization. The Top 15 Young Geeks were selected based on skills capacity, impact on the
community, and business sense.
Read More: https://www.geekulcha.dev/young-geeks
