TEAMS of software developers from Africa have been flying the flag of the continent at the final championship round of SunGard’s second annual codeathon, the 2014 Global Coder Cup in Tunisia.
In total, 11 teams from seven countries met at London’s Emirates Stadium to participate. The finalists were given 48 hours and a clear mission: to harness big data to create a new tool for compliance officers across financial services firms.
Africa was represented by teams from Tunisia and South Africa, who had won through to the final stage after seeing off competition from over 100 teams and 500 participants. The final championship, sponsored by Intel, included a judging panel consisting of SunGard’s chief technology officer, thought leaders and industry experts from Intel and Blackstone.
The team from Cape Town, South Africa, won second place by creating a compliance tracker, a tool that attempts to support compliance officers by easily identifying potential non-compliant trades through advanced visualization.
Wissam Khoury, managing director Middle East and Africa, SunGard Financial Systems, said: “The strong representation from teams in Africa underlines how much talent exists on the continent. Events such as the Global Coder Cup can harness this talent and give our developers a platform to showcase their innovation.
“In an effort to support our customers with an increasingly sophisticated compliance environment, we gave our coders the challenge to use big data to create new tools that chief compliance officers in financial institutions can utilize in strengthening their operations.
Our codeathons highlight our commitment to investing in technology development, bringing talent from across the organization together to build new, creative solutions that help benefit our customers across the financial services industry.
“The standard from our African teams was extremely high and we are now looking forward to seeing what African developers can produce at next year’s event.”
SunGard is one of the world’s leading software and technology services companies, with annual revenue of about $2.8 billion. SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, education and the public sector. SunGard serves approximately 16,000 customers in more than 70 countries and has more than 13,000 employees.
African Eye News
