The 51·çÁ÷Co-Innovation Lab Africa hosts hackathons and Partner Innovation Days, where teams engage with new technologies and creative problem solving. Recently the Co-Innovation Lab demoed a Smart City app, which combines SAP  and 51·çÁ÷backend tools, including Workflow Management, to streamline service requests in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Tell us first about the Co-Innovation Lab and what you’re working on.

Tshepo Mahloko: I’m responsible for the Co-Innovation lab in Africa, and we are one of about 14 labs globally. We work with partners to help them build solutions on our platforms. Typically, we enable them on the 51·çÁ÷Business Technology Platform for instance to build side-by-side extensions for some of our business systems like S/4HANA. Sometimes the partner may have an application of their own which they would like to integrate with 51·çÁ÷business systems, we help with this as well amongst other things.

We provide this assistance at the moment through an offering we call #Hack2Build, which is a rapid prototyping initiative to drive early-stage inspiration, use case exploration and technology adoption for 51·çÁ÷partners. In the seven days of #Hack2Build partners have an opportunity to try out their ideas and put their 51·çÁ÷knowledge into practise by applying a combination of technologies to solve business challenges and develop innovative solutions supported by 51·çÁ÷experts.

The whole aim is not just about having a winner for the event, what follows is what we call the build phase, where we engage with them one-on-one to help them take their prototypes to actual solutions. In the future, we hope to host a Hack2Build event focused on low-code no-code with 51·çÁ÷AppGyver.

What were your roles in the Smart City demo?

Phillip Phiri: For this project I was mostly behind the scenes, getting the integration with BTP working and also with our business rules and Workflow Management. We’re trying to get as many 51·çÁ÷backend services to work with it, just to showcase how you can have a full stack app, but also sticking with the low-code/no-code theme, so we picked out a few tools within BTP that would go well with 51·çÁ÷AppGyver.

Seatile Vinolia Nakedi: I am the intern of the whole group and basically I touch on everything that the guys allow me to work on which is great, some of it strictly development as well. On the end to end solution with AppGyver, I worked with Philip in terms of the business rules and Workflow. I played with AppGyver a little bit also and enjoyed it, lots of drag-and-drop, nothing too hectic.

Sikhumbuzo Dlamini: I’m a full stack developer, so covering basically everything from front- to backend, mostly working with SAP-related technologies.

Tell us about Partner Innovation Day and the Smart City App.

Tshepo Mahloko: Partner Innovation Day is an opportunity for partners to hear from 51·çÁ÷on the latest updates with regards to our technology platform and partner support offerings that can help them innovate with SAP. Each Partner Innovation day has a technology focus, which in this case was low-code/no-code development with 51·çÁ÷AppGyver. We also built a demo to demonstrate the practical use of the technology.

In this case we wanted to demonstrate that low-code/no-code is real and that you can build a really compelling application that integrates into an 51·çÁ÷backend. We decided to go with a smart city use case because we felt that there are endless requirements for citizen applications within a city/municipal context, which makes it a good fit for rapid application development.

As a city, you respond to natural disasters, service requests, pandemics, and you have such a huge audience of citizens that often times requires a very close engagement through various platforms. Being able to put an application together and deploy it in a place where citizens can access it very quickly is what AppGyver promises to do.

Through this app, citizens can log service requests and get the latest update on issues logged anytime of the day, whether it’s a burst water pipe, a pothole or streetlights that are out. With the intelligence built on 51·çÁ÷BTP we were able to implement some automation that allows for immediate feedback for the citizen. Most of the cities would already have some sort of backend used to handle tickets, so we decided to use AppGyver for the citizen app frontend because it’s very quick to develop these type of solutions on the platform and get them in the hands of the citizens, whether they are on native or web. That’s the beautiful thing about AppGyver.

How was it working with 51·çÁ÷AppGyver alongside 51·çÁ÷backend tools?

Phillip Phiri: We really wanted to stick to the whole theme of low-code/no-code. We quickly learned that from AppGyver, we can call APIs and that was a great sign that we can get something working over here, as long as we can send data from AppGyver. Whatever payload we were getting from AppGyver, we could work with that data, format and change it.

Tshepo Mahloko: One thing we realized is when you take a picture with AppGyver, it uses your phone camera’s full might, so the file comes as a high-definition image and converting it to Base64 results in a huge payload. We were thinking about how we could reduce it, but thought it might be too complex for AppGyver and that we may need to write custom code on BTP.

Sikhumbuzo quickly looked it up and found the compress picture flow function, and within a few minutes we plugged it into our flow and we were compressing pictures. I was totally impressed by that. From the time we found the solution, to having it implemented and working in our app was about five minutes. That’s truly incredible.

Phillip Phiri: When I saw it in action, that’s when I became a believer. You could very quickly come up with an idea, drag a few components onto a screen and boom, here’s an app, and it’s fully functional. Having built mobile apps before, typically you’re looking at a week just to get your layout right, getting the button to listen to events, and doing debugging.

The value in this is huge — even in a day, you can already have an app out there. You can show it to somebody important and focus on the really important bits like core functionality and the value given to your customer or users.

What’s most exciting for the partners using 51·çÁ÷AppGyver moving forward?

Phillip Phiri: I see this really fitting in well, especially for our hackathons. What I envision with AppGyver with the partners is that they’ll have a little more freedom to build their apps and then take advantage of that value add, which is that business logic behind the scenes that they’re really there for.

Tshepo Mahloko: I agree with Phillip on this, it will be a big hit for our Hackathons. A lot of the intelligent technologies that one might want to leverage for their solutions are available through APIs. From what I’ve seen with this demo that we built, it’s very easy to integrate and call those APIs, and get feedback with AppGyver. At the end of the day, one can focus on building the value around their solution rather than trying to hack through code just to invoke APIs from different systems and coordinate that logic.

For more information on #Hack2Build and to see upcoming events, visit: 

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This article originally appeared on the AppGyver Blog on 

The post Building No-Code Smart Cities in Africa with 51·çÁ÷AppGyver and 51·çÁ÷Backend Services appeared first on 51·çÁ÷Africa News Center.

Globally, local and national governments continue to gain access to ever more powerful technologies for collecting, storing, processing and applying data.

As cities improve their capacity for collecting and analysing data, and continue to gather more of it, an opportunity for open collaboration emerges. Many of the risks we face – rapid urbanisation, the impacts of climate change, effective management of scarce resources such as water – are shared among South Africa’s cities.

Leveraging shared data and analytics could help identify risks more quickly, drive the development of solutions to common challenges and greatly improve the delivery of services to citizens, thereby fostering trust and building greater social cohesion.

With the volume of operational and experience data growing at a rapid pace, cities could – with the correct investment into intelligent technologies – seamlessly merge data sets to produce real-time insights that can guide decision-making at every step of the citizen journey.

Building greater e-government capacity

In a recent UN e-government study, in the e-government development index, an indicator of digital government services maturity. This put the country in the top 100 countries worldwide and above the global average, although still well behind countries in Europe, North America and Asia.

According to the OECD, within African cities. Considering the parlous state of finances in some of South Africa’s cities, the improved use of data could help bring greater transparency to public spending and help ensure critical financial resources are applied where they can make the greatest difference to citizens.

For example, an open data policy, where cities make important data visible and accessible to citizens, could improve oversight over how governments make important decisions, how public funds are spent versus what the budget priorities are, and how well different government departments are functioning in providing essential services to citizens.

According to the UN, the number of countries that have set up open government data portals continues to increase, .

SA cities strive for smart

Locally, cities such as Cape Town have established open data portals that encourage citizen participation in local government decision-making processes. The City of Cape Town offers nearly 86 data sets for downloading by the public, with stakeholders such as universities, laboratories and non-profit organisations using the data to drive local research and innovation.

Cape Town’s Emergency Policing and Incident Command (EPIC) program, which went live in 2016 and is a first of its kind in South Africa, provides a centralised emergency control platform for the preparation, mitigation, response and quick resolution of all public safety incidents in the city. The platform is built on powerful intelligent technologies with comprehensive reporting capabilities that provide real-time access to incident data which informs broader planning and response strategies.

Johannesburg is accelerating its plans to become a smart city by mobilising its enviable community of start-ups and innovators through a city-wide smart city innovation challenge. In addition, President Ramaphosa’s vision for building a brand new smart city on the outskirts of Johannesburg could foster a new era of innovation.

Relying on renewable energy and built with a focus on non-motorised transport, the planned smart city could accommodate up to half a million residents by the end of the decade and transform the economic and employment prospects for millions living in the region.

Unlocking intelligent public enterprises

Improved use of data within SA’s cities could also foster new business models that are built on data-driven innovation and real-time insights. By improving the use of data as a vital public resource, cities could achieve:

1. Improved governance through evidence-based policy making, outcomes-based contracting for key public works programmes, and community budgeting that increases citizen engagement with vital budgetary processes to help ensure optimal use of public funds;

2. Better mobility through the integration of ride-hailing and demand-based transit services into public transport networks, improved e-mobility, and the establishment of network logistic hubs;

3. Superior citizen experiences through the improved delivery of e-government services, better experience management to remove pain points from citizen interactions with government services, and predictive public safety initiatives;

4. Cleaner environment through the establishment of infrastructure and services enabling a circular economy, and empowering citizens to become digital prosumers; and

5. Stronger economy through improved public-private partnerships, access to more accurate city data to drive economic development, and intelligent revenue collection.

However, cities need to invest in intelligent technologies that enable the seamless collection, processing, storing and application of a broad range of data. A business technology platform that can easily integrate new technologies and provide a single source of truth to policy-makers can help optimise decision-making and ensure citizens remain at the centre of city plans, initiatives and interventions.

Investing in intelligent technologies such as IoT and experience management tools can give cities access to broader data sets, which can be mined for insights using AI and advanced analytics. And using cloud technologies can help provide ready access to critical services even during times of heightened disruption, while offering opportunities for scaling services to new citizens or regions as needed.

The post Can Data Drive the Success of SA’s Cities? appeared first on 51·çÁ÷Africa News Center.