Voting rules

Draft for legal review. The organisers will confirm this text before voting opens.

The public vote decides which projects reach the finale and who wins People's Choice. These rules keep it fair.

When

Voting opens on Monday 19 April 2027 and closes on Sunday 2 May 2027 at 23:59:59 East Africa Time. Votes after the close are not accepted.

Who can vote

Anyone with a Tanzanian mobile number (+255). You do not need an account.

How to vote

1. Open a project in the gallery and choose Vote for this project.
2. Enter your mobile number and complete the short check that you are not a robot.
3. We send a 6-digit code by SMS. It is valid for 10 minutes, and you have 3 attempts to enter it.
4. Confirm your vote.

How many votes

• You have one vote per category, so up to four votes in total: one in each of categories A, B, C and D.
• Votes are final. You cannot change or cancel a vote once it is confirmed.
• Using the same number again does not give you extra votes.

What is not allowed

The following lead to votes being removed and may lead to the project being disqualified:

• buying votes, or offering money, airtime, gifts or any reward for votes;
• using fake, temporary or borrowed numbers, or collecting other people's numbers or codes;
• pressuring anyone, including students, staff or parents, to vote;
• using software, bots or any automated way to vote.

Teachers and students may share their project's link and ask people to vote, as long as nobody is rewarded or pressured.

How votes are checked

• No vote counts are shown publicly during voting.
• The platform watches for unusual patterns, for example many votes from one place in a short time. Suspicious votes are reviewed, and votes can be removed with a recorded reason.
• After voting closes, two vote auditors from different partner organisations check the votes and both sign off before any result is published.
• The Top 20 finalists are announced on Tuesday 4 May 2027. The People's Choice result stays sealed until the finale.

Your privacy

We never store your phone number in readable form. It is replaced by a scrambled code (a keyed hash), used only to make sure each number votes once per category, and erased 30 days after the finale. We do not use your number to contact you after sending the code. See the Privacy notice.

Questions or concerns

If you think someone is breaking these rules, please report a concern. The organisers' decisions on voting are final, subject to the appeals process in the Rules.