Our Story
The CATS Hackathon Journey: From Ground Truth to Regenerative Solutions
We broke the cardinal rule of most hackathons. We didn’t start with code. We didn’t start with pitches. We started by leaving the building, stepping into the markets, campuses, farms, and streets of Lagos to witness the raw, unfiltered truth of the systems we intended to serve.
What followed was two weeks of intensive field research, then weekly virtual sessions every Wednesday and Saturday where teams built and refined working prototypes grounded in real needs. This is the story of how 11 teams confronted uncomfortable truths and demonstrated that regenerative innovation isn’t just possible, it’s necessary.
[YouTube Video] Watch the full journey: From street research to working solutions
The Journey in Three Acts
Act One: The Pulse Check
Where we discovered that 40 million merchants generate 58% of Nigeria’s GDP yet remain invisible to banks
Between November 15 and November 22, 2025, our teams didn’t touch a keyboard. Instead, they fanned out across Lagos and beyond, executing what we call a “Broad Scan”, a disciplined refusal to build solutions based on assumptions. They went to the markets where traders pay daily levies with no receipts. They visited farms where productive harvests couldn’t secure loans due to lack of verifiable data. They documented waste collectors handling 14,000 tons of daily refuse yet facing financial exclusion. They witnessed collapsed campus infrastructure and ignored student complaints.
What they brought back wasn’t feature ideas. They brought back contradictions. Evidence of an economy running in the shadows, invisible to the very institutions meant to serve it. They found trust deficits, opacity where transparency should exist, and entire populations locked out because their economic activity couldn’t be verified.
Act Two: The Signal in the Noise
How community consensus replaced chaos, and five AI systems helped preserve fairness
On November 26 and 29, 2025, the teams gathered virtually for two marathon sessions on Google Meet. The raw data from the field was overwhelming, dozens of problems with no clear throughline. But through facilitated discussion and pattern recognition, something crystallized. The problem wasn’t lack of technology or ambition. The problem was invisibility, opacity, and systemic distrust.
The breakthrough came when teams realized they weren’t building productivity tools. They were building trust infrastructure for an economy that operates in the dark.
Then came the evaluation challenge. How do you select top teams fairly when the person leading the selection is also competing? The community solved its own problem by reconvening with a proposal: let AI decide. Five different language models would evaluate all projects using a community agreed prompt based on the CATS Regenerative Framework. The result? Transparent, bias free selection.
Read The Signal in the Noise →
Act Three: Built from Truth
Eleven working prototypes. Five finalists selected by AI. Three local winners building regenerative systems.
By December 19, 2025, over 100 attendees gathered at Next Trend Hub for the Final Hack Day. Teams demonstrated working MVPs that made the invisible visible, replaced blind trust with verification, and designed for African realities.
The evaluation process became a case study in community organizing. Five AI models (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, Grok, and Perplexity) evaluated projects using a community agreed prompt focused on regenerative impact. Five teams emerged as finalists, and from those, three local winners were selected.
Meet the Top Three Winners
First Place: [Winner Team Name]
[One compelling sentence about their solution and regenerative impact, to be filled with actual winner]
Second Place: [Winner Team Name]
[One compelling sentence about their solution and regenerative impact, to be filled with actual winner]
Third Place: [Winner Team Name]
[One compelling sentence about their solution and regenerative impact, to be filled with actual winner]
But here’s the deeper truth: every team that went into the field, listened to communities, and built solutions grounded in real needs contributed to something far bigger than a competition. They laid the foundation for Africa’s trust infrastructure, a regenerative ecosystem where economic activity no longer needs to hide in the shadows.
Explore all 11 regenerative projects →
The Impact in Numbers
From November 15 to December 19, 2025, the CATS Hackathon Lagos Hub mobilized eleven teams tackling real problems. Two weeks of intensive field research across markets, campuses, and farms. Weekly virtual sessions every Wednesday at 6 PM WAT and Saturday at 1 PM WAT for building and refining solutions. Over 100 attendees at the Final Demo Day.
The problems weren’t small: a 32.2 billion naira financing gap starving SMEs, 40 million micro merchants contributing 58% of Nigeria’s GDP yet invisible to banks, farmers blocked from loans, waste collectors facing financial exclusion, and students paying tuition for crumbling infrastructure.
When the selection process risked bias, the community built a better process together. Five language models independently scored projects. Five finalists emerged. Three winners were selected by the global organizers.
What Makes This Different
Most hackathons start with ideas and end with pitches. This hackathon started with ground truth and ended with working prototypes solving real problems.
We started with truth, not assumptions. Teams spent two weeks in the field interviewing traders, farmers, waste collectors, students, and small business owners. They documented the friction, opacity, and distrust that define economic life for millions before writing a single line of code.
We built infrastructure, not just apps. The solutions create foundational systems: verified work ledgers, transparent escrows, immutable audit trails, trust based credit profiles. Building blocks that other solutions can build upon.
We designed for reality, not aspiration. Our teams built for data poverty, basic phones, and analogue habits because that’s where our communities are. WhatsApp native learning platforms. Low data agricultural records. Social recovery systems that preserve crypto self sovereignty without punishing human error.
We organized around fairness. When the evaluation process risked bias, the community paused, discussed, and agreed on a process that honored transparency. They used preexisting data sources and employed five AI models to eliminate human bias.
We measured regeneration, not disruption. The evaluation prompt asked which solutions demonstrated deep local problem understanding, created sustainable economic or social loops, and restored value to users rather than extracting it.
Where This Journey Leads
This hackathon wasn’t the finish line. It was the starting gun for a regenerative ecosystem that’s only beginning to take shape.
The teams are now deploying their solutions in real communities. Financial institutions, government agencies, and NGOs are beginning to engage with the projects. Other hubs across Africa are watching, learning, and preparing to adopt the CATS methodology in their own contexts.
The solutions themselves are starting to recognize each other. Catalyst’s credit profiles could feed into CivicChain’s digital identity system. Inclusive’s waste collector ledgers could integrate with Ratify’s transparent escrows. OSWEB’s agricultural data could connect with Catalyst’s lending platform. The regenerative economy isn’t one app. It’s an ecosystem of trust infrastructure where making one part visible helps make all the other parts visible too.
This is what native innovation looks like. Not copied from Silicon Valley. Not borrowed from European frameworks. Built from African ground truth, designed for African realities, and organized around African values of community, transparency, and collective progress.
Begin Your Exploration
Start with The Pulse Check to witness what our teams discovered when they left the building and found the invisible economy. Move to The Signal in the Noise to see how chaos became clarity through community organizing. Finish with Built from Truth to explore all eleven regenerative solutions with links to GitHub repositories, live demos, and YouTube presentations.
Join the movement:
Whether you’re an investor looking to fund pilots, a developer wanting to build on the infrastructure, a community organizer ready to run your own CATS Hackathon, or a policymaker seeking to understand what’s possible when communities lead, there’s a place for you in this ecosystem.
The trust infrastructure for Africa’s invisible economy is being built right now. You can be part of it.
We didn’t come to disrupt. We came to regenerate. And that changes everything.