Baku Food Hackathon

On November 28, the Delegation of the European Union (EU) to Azerbaijan, Young European Ambassadors and the EU-funded “AgroVision” project implemented by the Eurasian Cooperation Fund and the Foundation for Constitutional Studies held Baku Food Hackathon.

The main topic of the hackathon is to promote healthy eating habits, encourage the consumption of local foods and create innovative solutions to food problems in Azerbaijan.

The event aimed to support agriculture as one of the significant fields in the country.

The purpose of the two-day event was to bring together representatives of the IT and Start-up communities in Baku with local food producers from the regions, to inform participants about the most important challenges and opportunities related to agritourism, local food production, distribution, and consumption.

Experienced local and foreign mentors were involved to support and assist the participating teams.

Emphasizing the great attention, the European Union pays to the development of youth, EU Ambassador to Azerbaijan Peter Michalko said: “Agriculture plays an important role in the diversification of the economy of Azerbaijan and is characterized by a large number of small producers. We support the efforts of the Government which encourages small producers to cooperate and work jointly in order to reach economies of scale, upgrade their skills through provision of advisory services and facilitate access to finance. I am very happy to see so much interest from young people in the topics of agriculture and how they can contribute to exploiting the existing potential and find innovative solutions to problems through their ideas”.

The winner was chosen by the members of the jury composed of high-profile experts in the field of agricultural services and innovation. The jury included the director of the ABAD Rufat Elchiyev, Chairman of the Agrarian Credit and Development Agency (ACDA) Mirza Aliyev, Deputy Director of the Agrarian Innovation Center (AIC) Anar Jafarov and Head of Department at the Innovation Center under the State Agency for Public service and Social Innovations Shabnam Mammadova.

The winning team “Agrinova” won EUR 5,000, “Stockfish” team took the second place and won EUR 3,000, and “Agrodel” finished third and too EUR 1,000. 

It should be noted that a total of 144 persons filled out the application form and 12 teams with a total of 50 persons were selected. The evaluation criteria for the applicants considered the experience of the participants, innovativeness and real impact of the proposed solutions.