Ayiti AI Hackathon returns, built around Haiti's real-world constraints
The second edition runs November 27–29 in Pétion-Ville and asks teams to build AI that works with unreliable power and internet, and in Kreyòl. Applications close October 18.
Ayiti AI and AyitiLab are bringing back the Ayiti AI Hackathon for a second edition, from November 27 to 29, 2026, in Pétion-Ville. Its theme, "AI beyond ideal conditions", asks teams to design from the start for irregular electricity, difficult internet access, limited data and the small place Kreyòl still has in technology tools, rather than treating them as obstacles.
How it works
- A 48-hour build, in person. The weekend takes place in Pétion-Ville; the venue has not been announced yet.
- Teams of two or three, with at least one person able to lead the development. The hackathon is open to developers living in any department of Haiti, and participation and training are free.
- Applications close October 18 at 11:59 p.m. They opened on September 18, through the official site.
- A month of preparation first. Selected teams follow online training on four Saturdays, from October 31 to November 21, live or on replay. It covers AI agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), offline and edge AI, and Kreyòl voice technology. Chokarella reports that the preparation is mandatory.
Six tracks
Teams pick one of six "frontiers" when they apply, and can change their idea during the training:
- AI agents for the real economy: small businesses, the informal economy, services over WhatsApp, SMS or voice
- Offline AI, edge AI and the physical world
- Native Kreyòl, voice first: speech recognition, synthesis, translation and Kreyòl voice data
- Resilience, security and the common good
- Learning without limits
- An open track for everything else
According to Chokarella, ElevenLabs is the technology partner and sponsors a prize for the best Kreyòl voice experience, and Banj supports the event. Projects will be judged on how useful they are to a clearly identified user, whether they work with limited infrastructure, whether they actually run during the demo, their potential beyond Haiti, and the quality of execution.
What last year produced
The first edition, in November 2025, brought together 15 teams; 11 delivered working products within 48 hours. Two projects went on to present at DevExpo, and one reached the finals. First place went to AgriBot, from Team Crusaders: a Kreyòl-language app that diagnoses diseased maize leaves from a phone photo, entirely offline. It is still in beta. "Last year showed that Haitian developers can build and ship," Kenley Jean, founder and executive director of Ayiti AI, told Chokarella. On the language question, he was blunt: "If AI is going to be useful to Haitians, it has to work in the language they actually use."
The bet is that tools built for a country where the power cuts out and the connection drops can travel well beyond it.
