2026 CodeXtreme Ingenious Hackathon Season 1

Dates: 4th – 7th March 2026 (Final)
Venue: African Leadership University, Kigali, Rwanda

Time: 9:00 AM - 9:00 PM

The CodeXtreme Ingenious Hackathon is a 4-day intensive venture formation sprint designed to transform high-potential student ideas into structured startup teams.

This year, the Hackathon will convene 250–350 top student founders and aggressive builders across disciplines, selecting 10 ventures into a structured 5 month Buildathon track focused on disciplined execution, team and product development, market traction, and early startup growth.

The Hackathon serves as the entry point into the national Ingenious talent and venture pipeline operating across multiple university nodes.

• Activate early tech talent: provide a platform for students and recent graduates to learn, build, pressure test their skills, flex their builder/innovator capabilities, and share their creative passion for technology. We aim to Discover, Inspire, Activate, Nurture, and Accelerate early tech talent to build the next generation of aggressive builders and innovators of today.

• Solve real problems: encourage participants to develop scalable solutions that address pressing real-world challenges under the theme “Build Things People Need: High‑Value, High‑Impact Solutions to Shape Communities.”

• Co-build, nurture and launch top prototypes: select top 10 teams for the CodeXtreme Ingenious 5-month technical buildathon and help them build and deploy fully fledged products the world. From raw ideas to impact.

• Target audience: 350+ students, self-taught, bootcamps and recent graduates from universities across Rwanda. Early tech talent and founders.

• Team size: 2 – 4 people.

• Mentors & judges: We are recruiting mentors and a diverse judging panel representing sponsors, academia, and industry.
  
  

The hackathon will span four days

Pillar 1 - Productive Economy

• AgriTech

• Climate and Sustainability

• Physical Infrastructure & Logistics

• IoT

Focus on production, supply chains, and the real economy.

Pillar 2 - Human Capital Systems

• HealthTech

• EdTech

Focus on human capability and long-term development.

Pillar 3 - Financial & Digital Infrastructure

• FinTech & Economic Empowerment

• Digital and Cloud Infrastructure

• Decentralized Ledger Technology

Focus on economic rails + digital backbone.

Open track – participants solve any meaningful and relatively hardcore problem aligned with the theme. This is for people working on really contrarian ideas or deep/rare tech that does not fit in any of the provided pillars and tracks.

• Product and Design Engineering workshop: Building in the age of AI. An Engineering Manager Perspective.

• Product and Business workshop: A PMF Journey.

• 1:1 Engagement with Mentors: Office hours, product feedback sessions, and pitch clinic.

• 1st Place: USD 2,500 + exclusive Ingenious Buildathon spot.

• 2nd Place: USD 1,500 + exclusive Ingenious Buildathon spot.

• 3rd Place: USD 1,000 + exclusive Ingenious Buildathon spot.

• 4th to 10th Place: Exclusive access to the CodeXtreme Ingenious Buildathon track, the national talent and venture pipeline operating across multiple university nodes for an incredible 5 months of building.

• Ingenious Hack Certificate after the hackathon.

• Ingenious Build Certificate after the 5-month buildathon track.

Why partner with us?

• Direct exposure to high-potential student founders

• Early visibility into emerging ventures ready to scale after the Buildathon

• Alignment with structured venture development

• Participating in building Rwanda’s new age of startup talent and scalable ventures.

• Contribution to a national, multi-university innovation pipeline

Contact Information

• Email: events@codextreme.io

• Phone: +250737026499

Docs

2026 Season | Official Schedule

CodeXtreme-2025-impact-report.pdf