With only a few days left before the inaugural TADHack, MTN has announced that 64 top developers have registered to participate in this year's event and will pit their talents against the best developers in 30 countries around the world.

The African edition of TADHack will be staged at the MTN Innovation Centre in Johannesburg from 14 – 16 October 2016 with the theme 'Decoding Africa: Africa solving African Problems'.

According to organisers the hackathon category allows developers to come up with new ideas or answer a sponsor's challenge, while the Showcase category allows developers to showcase advanced development or commercial products that will be vying for industry recognition.

"They will compete to create hacks using the global sponsors' resources in the focus areas such as BOTs, AI, IoT, Enterprise Communications, NFV, and open source contributions," reads a statement.

CIO MTN SA, Benjamin Marais says the event is in line with MTN's ongoing commitment to catalyse development and innovation in the African ICT industry. "We are confident that with the high calibre of challengers entering from South Africa and Zambia, TADHack Africa will put the continent on the map by showcasing the talent and skills set that the continent possess."

He adds: "This is the first time Africa is participating in TADHack, but with sponsors like IBM, Mahindra Comviva, ZTE and Huawei, it promises to meet international standards."

The closing date for TADHack registrations has been extended to 5 October 2016.