Profiles of main tech parks, accelerators, hackathons
In order to organise and manage the activity of tech parks in Azerbaijan, the High Tech Park, based under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies, was launched according to the Presidential decree of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev on 5 November, 2012. The goal was to stimulate the ICT development in the economy and increase the competitiveness of the national technological market; to develop ICT based on modern scientific and technological achievements; to create modern infrastructure for further pursuit of Research & Development and the implementation of new technologies in the country.
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies is working to expand the activity of technology parks and create new industrial facilities in the sector of high technologies. A business incubation center has been established under Azerbaijan’s High Tech Park to stimulate innovation activities, and more than 30 startups currently operate in the centre.
In addition, the Research Center for High Technologies under the Ministry is currently working on priority areas in nanotechnology. To support innovative entrepreneurship, the State Fund for Development of Information Technologies of the Ministry acts as an investor of successful projects. In this direction, 117 projects were financed following six grant competitions held by the Fund.
Hackathon Azerbaijan is a project that unites the programmers to solve various problems, prepare projects and organise events in Azerbaijan. The main goal of the project is to check the knowledge of local programmers, network administrators and technology lovers, to compete with each other, to gain new and practical knowledge.