Saudi Arabia, Lebanon represent top 3 winners of Arab Youth Hackathon at COP28

Saudi Arabia, Lebanon represent top 3 winners of Arab Youth Hackathon at COP28

Mubasher: Two Lebanon-based companies as well as a firm based in Saudi Arabia were the top three winners of the regional entrepreneurship programme Arab Youth Hackathon, which is spearheaded by PepsiCo along with PepsiCo Foundation and the Arab Youth Center (AYC).

Represented by Afif Wehbe, Green Taqa from Lebanon topped the participants and won the first prize of seed money worth $30,000 to scale its idea of converting organic materials into methane to produce clean energy, which can later be used to generate electricity, according to a press release.

Saudi Arabia-based Cropsense, represented by Murtadha Alnasser, came in the second place with a prize worth $20,000 for their idea of securing the runner-up position with their artificial intelligence (AI)-generated system to provide farmers with essential insights that allow them to make decisions based on data.

Arab Youth Hackathon aims at gathering emerging entities in the region that work on creating smarter solutions for climate-related issues in agriculture, circular economy, water security, and renewable energy.

A total of 15 promising solutions made it to the final to combat climate change, coming from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon as part of the Arab Youth Hackathon’s first edition that was held at the Youth