ECOWAS Hackathon 2022: 2nd in Togo, 76th in Africa
2nd in Togo. 76th in Africa. A team of four second-year students, competing against the continent.
The competition
The ECOWAS Hackathon is a cybersecurity hacking competition organized by the Economic Community of West African States (CEDEAO). It runs with a national bracket first, then an African-wide ranking.
We entered as four second-year students from IPNET. It was one of our first chances to see how our classroom training held up against teams from outside the school and outside Togo.
At a glance
| Detail | Result |
|---|---|
| Team | Four IPNET cybersecurity students |
| Academic level | Second year |
| Togo field | 24 teams |
| African field | 119 teams |
| National result | 2nd |
| Continental result | 76th |
The result
IPNET official ECOWAS Hackathon 2022 poster.
A team of four second-year Licence Cybersecurity students from IPNET:
- 2nd place nationally, out of 24 Togolese teams
- 76th place in Africa, out of 119 African teams
The team that finished 1st went on to represent Togo at the continental final.
Second place put us on the national podium, but only the winner qualified. We were close enough to see that qualification was possible and far enough away to know the result was not enough.
The lesson
We finished 76th out of 119 African teams in our second year. It was respectable, but 2nd nationally meant we were one position away from the only qualifying slot.
That gap stayed with me. The hunger to not fall one place short drove everything that came after: the preparation, the CTF club, and eventually the national title.
From second place to qualification
After this competition, I trained more regularly and stopped thinking of preparation as something to do alone. That shift later fed into the IPNET CYBER CLUB and stronger national results.
Four years later, I returned to the same competition cycle with RedTeam-TG. We finished first in Togo across all three phases of the 2026 qualifier and advanced to the continental final in Accra, where Togo earned third place.
In 2022, we missed Togo’s only qualifying place and finished near the bottom half of the African table. By 2026, the same competition cycle ended with a continental podium. That is the clearest measure of the progress between the two events.