Guzo Selected as a Country Partner for African Metaverse Competition Backed By Meta

AR/VR Africa Metathon, an African metaverse competition that aims to support African XR (extended reality) talent to build innovative solutions has selected Guzo Technologies as a country partner.

The annual competition by Imisi 3D,  an African extended reality ecosystem developer, partnered with Meta for this year’s edition and the competition will hold a series of programs and activations under the Meta global XR fund across 16 countries in Africa.

As part of the program, the metaverse competition will take place in Ethiopia through Guzotech, which will host a pre-hackathon training program, a hackathon, followed by an intensive bootcamp to further develop solutions. These components will run up to April 2023.

The AR/VR Africa Metathon, which focuses on the rapidly evolving immersive technologies of Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality, is also opened its call for applications.

Developers, programmers, UI/UX designers, artists, animators, storytellers, enthusiasts, professionals, students, and all that want to spend time creating solutions with augmented, virtual, and mixed reality in Ethiopia are invited to take part in the competition.

Guzo Technologies, founded by Daniel Getachew, is one of the few local startups engaged in AR/VR content design, development, and implementation. Guzo developed an XR product called Guzo Map, an all-in-one photo and video virtual tour platform aiming to recreate Ethiopian historical sites virtually.

“The youth have the key to the future. Instead of waiting for the future, we create the one we want. Guzo Technologies is delighted to partner with AR/VR Africa and join the 16 participating African nations for the 2022 edition,” Meti Girma, Project Manager at Guzo Technologies, told Shega.

“We are honored to represent Ethiopia once more, and we look forward to developing the potential of more than 150 young people and leaving our imprint on this significant Metathon,” Meti added.

Imisi 3D partnered with Meta, the parent company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, among others, and BlackRhino VR, to kickstart this year’s edition.

“The AR/VR Africa Metathon is an opportunity to demonstrate how artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality technologies that have been around for decades, are core to the future of the metaverse and what Africans are building in the industry.” Phil Oduor, Policy Programs Lead for Africa, stated.

Applications for the Metathon will close on November 16, 2022. Click here to find more details and apply.