Build Zero — Nairobi
A one-day sprint that brought 25 teams together to turn ideas into working demos.
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Join hack updates- Participants
- 200+
- Teams
- 25
- Members per team
- 5–8
- Volunteers
- 14
The hack
The story so far.
Twenty-five teams met in Nairobi for a one-day hackathon.
Turnout blew past every projection, and the day moved fast to keep up: a spillover hall opened in real time, orders on supplies, refreshments, and food were doubled, and every team got mobile data so wifi pressure never stalled the building. There were cracks — and the builders rolled with all of it without breaking stride. That's what made it work.
Some of what got shipped genuinely surprised us, and that's the highest compliment we can pay a room of builders. Team Sonic's Nurulearn took the day across both the judges' scoring and the audience vote, earning Best Use of AI and venture funding of up to $25K. Runners-up MedAI and DealShield were selected for funding evaluation alongside them.
Because the room doubled, the individual prizes doubled too: more than twenty builders were selected for internship offers with partner companies and fully funded seats in the next Crafts School cohort.
Volunteers, staff, mentors, and judges supported the teams throughout the day.
The people
Who it brought together.
- Builders coming together to develop and demonstrate working products.
- Teams combining technical skills with a problem they wanted to solve.
The work
From idea to demo.
- Working prototypes developed during a focused one-day sprint.
- Practical uses of AI, including the winning project Nurulearn.
Made by the community
Winners
Nurulearn
Team SonicWinner. Took the day across both the judges' scoring and the audience vote — earning Best Use of AI and venture funding of up to $25K from b54's venture partners.
MedAI
Runner-upRunner-up across the day's judging, selected for venture funding evaluation alongside the winning team.
DealShield
Runner-upRunner-up across the day's judging, selected for venture funding evaluation alongside the winning team.
The format
In person · One day
An in-person, one-day building sprint in Nairobi. Teams developed their projects with mentor support and presented their work for judging and an audience vote.
- Where
- Nairobi
Recognition
The event record.
The archive records judges’ scoring and an audience vote, with Nurulearn leading both. It does not include the detailed evaluation criteria or score weights.
Built with support
The partners behind the hack.
Major League HackingHackathon infrastructure behind Build Zero — Nairobi and UNILAG.
Visit Major League Hacking
Google CloudCloud infrastructure and Gemini credits at Build Zero.
DevpostThe submissions platform behind Build Zero.
Community partner for Build Zero — Nairobi.
Build Zero was run in partnership with Major League Hacking (MLH), whose fifteen years of hackathon infrastructure and global community made the day feel connected to something bigger. Google Cloud backed the day with cloud infrastructure and Gemini credits for every builder. Devpost powered the submissions platform that made every project visible and judgable. And Space ya Tech brought the community partnership and local roots that made Build Zero feel at home in Nairobi.
People, ideas, and everything between
Inside the hack.
View all 14 photographs
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