Fast-food franchise KFC Africa hosted a week-long hackathon that saw 60 participants developing new ideas to tackle child hunger. It will co-develop pilot programmes from the winning ideas with the partners of its food security charity programme Add Hope.

Add Hope uses donations from KFC customers to support more than 3 300 feeding centres across the country. The programme reached more than 154 000 children in 2024.

KFC Africa’s Biggest Hunger Hack saw young digital natives roped in to re-engineer the Add Hope programme. Potential seed funding of up to R1-million could be allocated to the development of the winning solution, it says.

The competition saw the young participants use AI, blockchain, data visualisation and community-driven platforms, which led to the development of technology-powered ideas that can change how food insecurity is tackled, the franchise says.

The overall winning team at the hackathon was Ctrl-Alt-Del-Hunger's Misfits Mzansi app, which secures edible fruit and vegetables that would normally be thrown away on farms owing to slight blemishes and delivers them to food-insecure families.

The platform also hosts short-form cooking challenges, edutainment content and advertising-driven donations that help to feed families as people engage with the platform's content.

Further, the Streetwise scripters team built a social-media-first donation ecosystem, which includes a real-time donor dashboard, donation hotspot map and integrates KFC's loyalty rewards. The team also proposed a KFCAddHopeSA TikTok-to-Till digital storytelling campaign to keep donors informed.

Additionally, the Bit Coders team’s chatbot ecosystem makes donations inclusive and transparent, even for non-KFC customers, and features AI-driven donor insights, rewards and tax certification downloads for big donations.

The Hack 4 Hope team’s solution involves a WhatsApp chatbot to allow customers to scan a quantity-recognition code from their KFC till slip to donate instantly.

The solution is built on blockchain and provides proof of the use of every R2 donated, from donor to meal served, thereby creating full transparency and reinforcing trust. The platform’s HopeCoins also rewards repeat donors.

“The Biggest Hunger Hack showed what happens when young digital natives use tech for good. They understand hunger because many have lived with it and they understand technology because they were born into it,” says KFC Africa brand purpose and environmental, social and governance head Andra Nel.

“Opening up Add Hope as an open-source blueprint has turned this programme into a broader movement.

“These Gen Z hackers showed how technology can supercharge reach and transparency. The goal now is to turn their best concepts into live pilots with our 128 feeding partners.” Nel says.

KFC Africa plans to showcase the results of the partnerships with hackathon participants at the National Convention on Child Hunger in early 2026.