Global UNESCO Hackathon : Cameroon's Team Joins Winners

The 2025 UNESCO Youth Hackathon global competition, aimed at training youth on World Media and Information Literacy (MIL), brought together several teams, and Cameroon’s youth team Mentes Libres emerged victorious. Under the theme; "Youth Leading the Way: Building MIL Solutions for Impact," participants presented projects highlighting how youths tackle urgent issues such as health, misinformation, climate change, job scams, and artificial intelligence, amongst other. Mentes Libres, a Spanish name which translates to "Free Minds" in English, is a group made up of six Cameroonians. The initiative of the group, which aims to bring Media and Information Literacy to orphans and underprivileged communities in the war-torn North West region, stood out from more than 12,000 submissions across 138 countries. Contrary to MIL programmes targeting urban and university-level youth, Mentes Libres prioritized youths often excluded. According to Cynthia Ebot, team leader of the group, what led their project was the desire to fight misinformation and fake news. She highlighted that "there is a lot of fake news and misinformation about the Anglophone crisis and events in Bamenda." She pointed out that several communities in Cameroon have no access to digital literacy and, therefore, cannot protect themselves while using the inter...