{"value":"

The Blue Economy recognizes productivity of healthy freshwater ecosystems is a pathway for freshwater aquatic economies and promotes the conservation, sustainable use, and management of associated resources (UNECA, 2016). In aquaculture, the approaches for actualizing the aspirations embodied in the Blue economy concept include; Cage culture (Lakes, Dams, and Rivers), Integrated RAS, Aquaponics or Greenhouse, Pens, Breeding and restocking of commercially important indigenous species and live fish markets.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the economic activities in the Lake region. However, what is key in the health sector is the response to the pandemic. There is a need to improve the sector’s policies to address the response to this pandemic. The Policy hackathon aims to look into innovative, sustainable and efficient policies that will address the constraints in local health response for future pandemics. All in all, the youth, making up the majority of the population, were majorly affected by the pandemic. Hence, there is a need to look for sustainable solutions to empower them economically and technologically by exploring sustainable models for new skill sets and future work opportunities. The Policy Hackathon will address the traditional barriers to youth employment and define policies that will widen the scope of future work in a sustainable model.

WHY A CHALLENGE?

Our goals for the Policy Hackathon is:

1. To harness prestige and intellectual curiosity to develop challenges, prizes, and crowdsourcing that will inspire individuals and teams to push past conventional limits and thinking to breakdown intractable barriers to change;

2. To encourage the development of new breakthrough innovations and solutions for aquaculture and health concerns during a pandemic;

3. To entice new innovators from outside of the field to bring their ideas to bear on critical challenges and challenge traditional views and biases and

4. To create new communities of practice that are focused on sustainable growth and attract new solvers and solutions to particular problems, opening the door for new entrants and building

momentum for new industries.

THE CHALLENGE

Introduce new methodologies and policies that are financially and environmentally sustainable, scalable, and will dramatically improve the efficiency of the farms thereby improving productivity, livelihoods, and market value. The challenge will encompass the policy challenge will be dedicated to the students and enterprises operating in the Blue Growth and Blue Economy sectors of the Kenyan LakeSide Region who will have the chance to work intensively with the so-called Knowledge Providers:

1) Skilled enterprises specialized in policy-making, technologies and business management;

2) Research development & innovation bodies;

3) Fab-labs, maker-spaces, co-working spaces, innovation hubs, living labs, tech shops, contamination labs or other similar entities for the development of project ideas aimed at improving experiences and possibilities for their products/services.

Target Audience

● Business developers

● Legal and Policy Advocates

● Researchers

● University students (mainly Political science, Law and international studies majors)

Policy Hackathon

The event is over

LBIIW