The Director, Research and Development at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Henry Nkemadu has adduced reasons behind the Covid-19 Hackathon competition, which was organized by the Commission.
He said the competition was organized as part of NCC’s commitments to fostering innovations in emerging technologies as the telecommunications ecosystem is very dynamic with technology continuously playing a key role in economic growth and sustainability of the modern world economy especially with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It is for this reason that the Commission initiated the NCC Virtual Hackathon 2020, in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, to challenge Nigerian Startups, Technology Hubs and Innovation Digital SMEs to come up with adaptable digital solutions for addressing the present and future impacts of Pandemic and Epidemic diseases in Nigeria. The Hackathon was designed to engage the Startups to compete in a healthy manner in such a way as to improve our innovativeness,” he said.
Dr. Nkemadu added that in Nigeria, the need to harness the potentials of these technologies to address our societal challenges and meet our unique needs becomes very important, adding that it is also a national aspiration to spice some of these technologies with local content as a way of improving availability of local manpower, and advancing ICT skills.
He also urged innovators to think laterally about challenges and identify resilient, fit-for-purpose and scalable solutions to real societal problems. Technology has provided solutions to the challenge of weak public systems by providing solutions to most of the challenges in education, health, financial and agric sectors.
Explaining further, he said when NCC advertised and called for entries to the Hackathon, a total of 298 submissions were received from Startups. After the first and second level preliminary assessments based on the pre-established selection criteria, 56 of the Startups qualified for the final stage of the Evaluation Processes.
According to him, a very competent team of Evaluators drawn from relevant Departments in the Commission worked assiduously to recognize excellence and select groundbreaking innovative solutions from Startups and Tech Hubs capable of mitigating the challenges posed by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country and beyond.
Out of the fifty-six (56) Solutions from different Startups that participated in the Virtual Hackathon, three (3) winning solutions were identified through a painstaking evaluation process that threw up the overall first, second and third bests Startups with the most promising and adaptable solutions.
Apart from receiving a cash prize by the winning Startups, Dr. Nkemadu assured that the Commission through the Research and Development Department will continue to support flourishing innovations by creating the right regulatory interventions to give a fillip to the sustenance of Startups and tech-hubs in Nigeria.
“Beyond prize-winning, we congratulate every Startup who participated in this competition. We have no doubt that the experience gained will provide all of us with the opportunity to retool and re-engineer our innovative skills for a better future for our businesses and our nation,” he assured.
The three winners are Primed E-Health, Cyberfleet Integrated Limited and Elizade University.