Mission 003: GKHack26 — East Africa Activation

GKHack26 is Geekulcha's hackathon — 25–27 September 2026, Centurion and virtual, under the theme "Build for Use." Reboot Republic runs its East Africa activation: we don't host the hackathon and we don't rename it — we mobilise builders into it and stand up local nodes so East African builders compete from where they are.

Lolwe AI & Robotics is Geekulcha's coordinator for Kenyan participation. The hackathon is powered by Telkom, co-hosted with South Africa's Centre for Public Service Innovation, with CompTIA as knowledge lead.

Their theme, "Build for Use," is the standard we already hold ourselves to: real users, real deployment, nothing that only works on demo day. Existing work qualifies — a team may enter with a project already underway, provided they build at least one significant new capability across the weekend.

Registration on the Geekulcha platform is currently closed. The continental submission window passed on 25 August and Geekulcha is setting guidance around a later intake. Until it reopens, builders join through the expression of interest held by Lolwe AI — two minutes, no account, no fee. This is not registration and we say so on the form. Everyone on the list is contacted the moment the window opens, and details are passed to Geekulcha so they can facilitate workspace access.

A node is a campus watch-party and build room — form teams, build across the weekend, ship something people can actually use. We're recruiting node hosts now. Kisumu: Geekulcha wrote to Great Lakes University on 17 July 2026 asking it to host. The University has not confirmed, so no venue is named here.