Open Data Innovation Challenge 2 | Botswana Digital & Innovation Hub

T1 Discovering Botswana:

Community value and cultural heritage: diversifying beyond high-end safari tourism and marking 60 years of independence.

T2 Resilient Health Systems:

Outbreak preparedness and the double burden of HIV and rising non-communicable disease.

T3 Climate-Resilient Agriculture:

Livestock health, market access and climate-smart farming for smallholders.

T4 Botswana’s Environmental and Energy Transition:

Supporting the shift from a coal-dependent grid toward the 2030 renewable energy target.

The 24 selected teams arrive with a working, already-tested prototype. Over three days in Gaborone, they refine it, integrate open data, and pitch once, at Sunday’s Track Pitch Semi-Final, in front of judges who can open real doors afterwards.

How teams are judged. Friday and Saturday’s team check-ins give judges and mentors useful context on each team’s progress, but are not themselves scored. On Sunday morning, each team pitches once at a track Semi-Final, judged on how the team works together, its technical approach and use of data, and the storyline, impact and delivery of its pitch; the two highest-scoring teams per track advance. Sunday afternoon’s Final Pitch is a head-to-head standoff between each track’s two finalists, decided by a full-jury vote rather than a fresh score, naming four Track Winners, one per track.

Who is competing. Developers, data scientists, designers, entrepreneurs, researchers, students and civil society innovators, selected from over 270 applications for this round’s 24 places, six per track.

Key dates. Applications closed in late August, and the 24 selected teams completed pre-event training from 1 to 4 September. The Track Pitch Semi-Final runs Sunday morning, 13 September, followed by the Final Pitch and Awards Ceremony from 13:00 the same day. For the full day-by-day timeline, see the Hackathon Schedule under Key Documents above.

Note: Dates reflect the programme’s confirmed schedule as of 7 September 2026.

This Challenge only works if the data behind it is real, and Botswana’s public bodies are the ones who hold it. If your organisation publishes, manages or is considering opening data, whether or not it sits inside one of the four confirmed tracks, this programme is built to work with you, not just ask you for something.

Why this matters right now. Botswana passed the Digital Services Act, 2025, establishing a Digital Services Authority and giving public bodies a 24-month window to name a data contact and hold a documented position on release and reuse. Alongside this, Botswana is actively shaping its own Open Data Policy through the National Open Data Forum process, and that work is not yet finished. This Challenge, and the Community of Practice working sessions run alongside it, generate real, tested evidence of what data readiness looks like inside a working institution, and where it currently falls short, that can inform this policy while it is still being written.

Statistics Botswana showed what this looks like. As the data holder touching all four tracks, Statistics Botswana confirmed its Tourism Satellite Account as usable and committed judges and mentors to the event itself, an early, concrete proof point that participation is practical, not just aspirational.

The Community of Practice. Ahead of the event, BDIH ran three half-day, in-person working sessions hosted at Statistics Botswana, mapping how public data actually moves today and turning that into a practical readiness picture, not an audit: Working Session 1 on process (how Statistics Botswana produces and disseminates data), Working Session 2 on pipeline (how data already reaches Statistics Botswana from other organisations), and Working Session 3 on law (who may release what, and on what basis). All three are complete.

Note: Session outcomes feed the National Open Data Forum process, ongoing beyond this Challenge.

What participation gives your organisation. Early visibility into a credible, government-endorsed innovation pipeline; a direct hand in shaping which sector challenges get tackled; working prototypes that give you a concrete, tested reason to prioritise the datasets and platforms that matter most; and a documented, evidence-based head start on the Digital Services Act’s own requirements.

Open Data Innovation Challenge 2 is delivered by the Botswana Digital & Innovation Hub (BDIH), with HAUS Finnish Institute of Public Management as grant holder, the European Union’s Team Europe Initiative providing technical and financial support, and the Ministry of Communications and Innovation (MCI) anchoring policy ownership through the Open Data Technical Working Group (ODTWG).

It sits inside a larger effort: EU Support to Digital Transformation in Botswana, a three-year initiative (2024-2027) funded by the European Union, supporting the SmartBots Digital Transformation Strategy adopted by the Government of Botswana in 2020. The programme is delivered by a Team Europe consortium: Expertise France as lead, HAUS Finnish Institute of Public Management, and ESTDEV, the Estonian Centre for International Development.

Open Data Innovation Challenge 2 is the second of three planned 2026 milestones: this Challenge, a third Challenge later in the year, and a National Open Data Forum that brings government, donors and the innovation ecosystem together to set direction beyond 2026, building toward a Botswana recognised as a regional reference point for what an open data economy can look like in practice.