Rules

The rules in brief (for students)

• Your team has 3 or 4 students from Forms 1 to 5 at the same school, with at least one girl.
• Each student is in one team only. A school can enter up to 3 teams.
• Your teacher-mentor registers the team and submits your project by Friday 2 April 2027 at 23:59 (East Africa Time).
• Your project uses AI to work on a real problem in your community, in one of the four categories.
• Do the work yourselves. You may use AI tools, but you must show in your AI Use Log what the AI did and what you did.
• Be safe and respectful. No faces of students who do not have media consent, no full names, no one's private information.
• Play fair. Buying votes, offering rewards for votes, using fake or borrowed numbers, or pressuring people to vote leads to votes being removed and may lead to disqualification.

The full rules follow.

1. Who can take part

1.1 Every secondary school in Unguja and Pemba can take part.

1.2 Students in Forms 1 to 5 can take part. Form 6 students cannot.

1.3 Each school has one teacher-mentor, approved by the head of school. The teacher-mentor registers the school, the teams and the project, and is the organisers' contact for the school.

1.4 A school can enter up to 3 teams. Each team has 3 or 4 students and at least one girl. A student can be in one team only.

1.5 Taking part is free for schools.

1.6 Students do not have their own accounts. The platform stores only each student's first name, form and sex, never surnames, phone numbers, addresses, dates of birth or photos.

2. Registration (Monday 11 January – Friday 5 February 2027)

2.1 The teacher-mentor registers on this website with their mobile number and confirms it with an SMS code.

2.2 The organisers verify each teacher-mentor and school before the account becomes active. If a second teacher registers for a school that already has a teacher-mentor, the organisers contact the school.

2.3 The teacher-mentor adds the teams, with a team name, a category and the members' first names, forms and sex, and records each student's media consent.

2.4 The teacher-mentor attends one orientation session (Thursday 21 January or Tuesday 26 January 2027) or confirms they have watched the recording. This is required before a project can be submitted.

3. Categories

Each team chooses one of the four categories:

• A. Blue Economy, Environment and Climate
• B. Learning, Kiswahili and Inclusion
• C. Health, Wellbeing and Community Services
• D. Creative AI: Arts, Culture and Tourism

See the Categories page for what each one covers. The organisers may move a project to a more suitable category during screening; the teacher-mentor is told if this happens.

4. What to submit (by Friday 2 April 2027, 23:59 EAT)

Submission opens on Monday 8 February 2027 (proposed date, to be confirmed). Each team submits one project with seven parts:

1. Project brief. The problem, who it affects, your solution and how you tested it. PDF, Word document or image; about 2 pages.
2. Demo video. Up to 3 minutes, shared as a link (YouTube, set to Unlisted, or Instagram). Students without media consent must not appear on camera.
3. Prototype evidence. A link, files, screenshots or photos that show your prototype working.
4. AI Use Log. For each use of an AI tool: the date, the tool, what you used it for, what you did yourselves, and any problems or mistakes you found.
5. Gallery summary. A title, a description of no more than 50 words and one image. No student faces unless media consent is held.
6. Consent copies. For every team member: the parent or guardian consent form, the student assent form and the media consent form. These are stored privately and seen only by screeners and safeguarding leads.
7. Teacher declaration. The teacher-mentor confirms the work is the team's own and the information is correct.

Files can be up to 10 MB each. The teacher receives an SMS receipt with the entry reference. After the deadline, submissions are locked.

5. Screening (5 – 8 April 2027)

5.1 Screeners check that every project is complete, eligible and safe.

5.2 The outcome is Eligible, Fix needed or Ineligible.

5.3 If a fix is needed, only the items concerned are reopened, and the teacher-mentor has 48 hours to correct them.

5.4 A project is ruled ineligible only if a second screener confirms it. The reason is recorded and given to the teacher-mentor.

6. Round 1 judging (5 – 16 April 2027)

6.1 Trained judges score each project against the seven criteria on the Judging page, out of 100 points.

6.2 Judges do not see the school or island of the projects they score, and declare any conflict of interest before judging.

6.3 Judges score content, not polish or language. Kiswahili and low-resource formats are equally valid.

6.4 Projects near the cut-off are scored by a second judge, and by a third judge if two scores differ by more than 15 points.

7. Top 50, gallery and public vote (19 April – 2 May 2027)

7.1 The Top 50 projects are announced on Monday 19 April 2027. Only projects scoring at least 50 out of 100 qualify, with at least 10 per category where possible.

7.2 Top 50 projects appear in the public gallery after the organisers check their images and video against media consent.

7.3 The public votes from 19 April until Sunday 2 May 2027 at 23:59 EAT. See the Voting rules.

7.4 Top 50 teams receive written feedback from the judges.

8. Top 20 finalists (Tuesday 4 May 2027)

8.1 After two vote auditors from different organisations have checked and signed off the votes, the top 5 projects by verified votes in each category become the Top 20 finalists.

8.2 If votes are tied, the project with the higher Round 1 score goes through. If a category has fewer than 5 Top 50 projects, its places go to the next most-voted projects from any category.

9. Appeals

9.1 A teacher-mentor may appeal a published result within 3 working days of its publication, using the form on their entry page.

9.2 Appeals concern the process, for example a rule applied wrongly, not the judges' opinions of a project.

9.3 The judging lead decides each appeal in writing. Top 20 appeals are resolved by Monday 10 May 2027.

10. Finale (Saturday 15 May 2027)

10.1 The Top 20 finalists present their projects to two panels of judges, using the same rubric.

10.2 The awards are described on the Awards page.

11. Fair play and disqualification

11.1 The work must be the team's own. Using AI tools is allowed and expected, but must be recorded honestly in the AI Use Log.

11.2 A project may be disqualified for plagiarism, false information, breaking the voting rules, unsafe or offensive content, or sharing someone's personal information without permission.

11.3 Before disqualifying a project, the organisers tell the teacher-mentor the reason and give them a chance to respond.

12. Safety

12.1 The organisers have designated safeguarding leads who handle any concern about a child's safety. Anyone can report a concern.

12.2 Any project or image can be removed from the public site at once if there is a concern.

These rules may be updated by the organisers. Any change is announced on this website.