As part of their continued efforts to promote a culture of collaboration and innovation in the port sector, Morocco’s National Ports Agency (ANP) and National Single Window PORTNET, together with the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation and Morocco’s port community, announce the first Smart Port Challenge 2020 hackathon. This international virtual co-creation and innovation event will take place from 18 December 2020 to 29 January 2021 and is open to every person, business, school or university that would like to propose an innovative concept in response to the hackathon challenges.
The Smart Port Challenge is an opportunity for participants to propose disruptive solutions that facilitate transit at Morocco’s ports and improve port performance. We are calling on all port experts, researchers, start ups, businesses and students to come up with creative responses to the challenges of: sustainable development, environmental protection and energy transition; performance, logistical fluidity and trade facilitation; and port service continuity and infrastructure availability.
Nadia Laraki, Director General, National Ports Agency (ANP), and Council President, PORTNET SA, said:
“Like all other sectors and industries, the logistics and port sector, on a global scale, has undergone major changes in recent years, driven by containerisation, ship size, accelerated technological development, innovation and e-commerce. These innovations have a definite impact on the development of ports and terminals and lead to major changes every day in working conditions and methods of collective collaboration,
“In addition, the health crisis linked to Covid-19 accelerated these changes already underway and allowed, in a very short time, the change of a multitude of paradigms. It demonstrated once again that digital technology is a real vector of solidarity, efficiency and flexibility in times of instability.
“In Morocco and more particularly within the ANP and the port community, we have fortunately become aware in an anticipated and proactive way of the importance of this lever through the establishment of a community electronic platform allowing :
- Easy collective digital collaboration to meet our daily challenges.
- A smooth exchange of data and documents between the different public and private actors involved in the port import and export logistics chain.
“The innovation initiative launched by the ANP in collaboration with the entire port community, in particular through the organisation of the first edition of the Hackathon Smart Port Challenge, is a real opportunity and a favorable framework for the consolidation of our innovation ecosystem in the port sector.”
Philippe Isler, Director, Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation, said:
“The Alliance is excited to be working with the ANP and Portnet on this opportunity to harness collective knowledge to address the challenges faced by Morocco’s ports. Implementing leading edge solutions at ports, such as automisation and digitisation, is needed to facilitate trade and support inclusive economic growth. We look forward to supporting this event with our trade facilitation and innovation event expertise, and to discover the innovative solutions that will be proposed. We wish the contestants the best of luck.”
