D-Jil Hackathon: a first weekend of competition

To launch Algeria's first online participatory women's magazine or to create a satirical media outlet in Morocco: such is the aim of just two of the 30 laureates pre-selected as part of the D-Jil programme from a total of 250 digital projects received.

Sixteen of them were invited to Casablanca for a first hackathon session held at Uzine from 6 to 8 July 2018. The event served as a full-scale test of the viability of the projects. The teams, made up of journalists, web developers, graphic designers and designers, were pitched against each other in a friendly competition to produce and build on the best presentation of their project.
Support was provided to the teams by six media, web, communication and entrepreneurial professionals from Algeria, France, Morocco and Tunisia.

13 other pre-selected project teams will meet at a second session to be held in Beirut from 13 to 15 July 2018.

At the end of the two hackathons, a panel of experts and young people drawn from the Mediterranean region – the primary target audience of the presented projects – will select the 10 projects to be awarded grants ranging from €60,000 to €80,000 to aid their development.

Co-funded by the European Commission and coordinated by CFI, D-Jil aims to support young people in the Arab world by kick-starting the revival of their digital media. What these ambitious and innovative projects have in common is a desire to do things differently and to open up new perspectives for young people through topics that affect and concern them.