Nigeria was jubilant recently when five Nigerian high-school girls were announced world champions at a tech competition in the US. Most importantly, this feat is sure to motivate and awaken a new generation of young tech champions in the country, writes Philip...Mpape Abuja
Five Nigerian teenagers were crowned champions at the World Technovation Challenge in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, USA, winning a prize worth US$10 000. The female students won the junior gold medal after beating competitors and teams from technological giants like the United States and China, as well as Spain, Turkey and Uzbekistan, who were among the 12 finalists in the 115 country-strong competition.Iridescent, a nonprofit organisation that empowers under-represented young people globally to become innovators and leaders, made the announcement that the two teams that won the top prizes at its 2018 Technovation World Pitch Summit, the world's
largest entrepreneurship programme for girls aged 10 to 18, were from India and Nigeria. The two teams were named winners in the senior and junior categories respectively at the Global Innovation Celebration held at San Jose. The celebration was the final event in the week-long World Pitch Summit, to which finalists and visiting teams travelled from around the world for networking, field trips to tech companies and career-building workshops.
The senior category winners, Team Cantavits from India, hope to track and dispose of electronic waste in an eco-friendly manner through its app, Eedo. The app provides an end-to-end connection between e-waste producers and authorised recyclers.
Africa's Golden Girls
The five Nigerian teenagers were selected from 2 000 mobile app developers to represent Africa at the World Pitching Challenge and won the junior title under the team name "Team Save a Soul". They are Promise Nnalue, Jessica Osita, Nwabuaku Ossai, Adaeze Onuigbo and Vivian Okoye, all from Regina Pacis, a high school in Anambra state, South East Nigeria. They are now widely regarded as "Africa's golden girls" after developing an app they named the "FD Detector" (FD stands for "fake drugs"). It helps in the fight against fake and often dangerous pharmaceutical products in their country. The app leverages a drug's barcode to verify its authenticity and expiration date. They also set the record of becoming the first Nigerian teenagers to officially visit Silicon Valley, where they will pitch their winning app to investors.
An annual challenge
Every year, the Technovation Challenge tasks girls in the age group 10 to 18, working in teams of one to five people, with creating and developing an Android mobile app that addresses a problem in their own community. The 2018 World Pitch Summit is the final event, coming after more than seven months of hard work, innovation and problem solving by more than 19 000 girls in 115 countries, supported by more than 5 000 mentors. Finalists were pitching for seed funding and scholarships. More than US$50 000 was awarded across the teams.
Read: Ugandan medical solution wins the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation
As soon as the announcement of the winners was made, Nigerians took to social media to congratulate and celebrate the "golden girls". One of the first to celebrate with them was Vice President Yemi Osibanjo, who, through his Twitter handle, said, "These young ladies, in junior secondary school, developed a mobile application called 'FD Detector' to tackle the problems of fake pharmaceutical products in Nigeria. Congratulations! We are very proud of you."
Under the tutelage of Uchenna Onwuamaegbu-Ugwu, the founder of Edufun Technik, a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education centre, the girls spent five months researching and developing the app before departing for the US for the grand finale.
"This is great news of national pride. These amazing girls spent five months researching and developing the FD Detector app while their mates watched video games or engaged in other things that interest teens their age," said Chinwe Okoli, a manager at Roar Nigeri, a technology-enabled innovation hub. "It shows that young Nigerians have the brains to invent the future we all wish for if given the right opportunity. These girls may not have thought about this if they were not given the chance to learn and be exposed to technology and its benefits."
Okoli went on to say, "This points to what and where the developmental efforts of government should focus on - creating an enabling environment to harness young talent for national development."
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