NCC gives N9 million research grant to COVID-19 Virtual Hackathon winners

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has presented a N9million COVID-19 research grant to 3 promising startups with adaptable digital solutions.

The startups participated in a 3 months long virtual hackathon organized by NCC in line with the policy directives of the Honourable Minister, Dr Pantami with the theme Virtual Hackathon: Adaptable Digital Solutions for Addressing the Present and Future Impact of Pandemic and Epidemic Diseases from Technology Hubs, Startups and Innovation Digital SMEs in Nigeria.

In his brief remarks, Dr Pantami, Honourable Minister of Communications said: “We need to produce what we need and consume what we produce, any country that remains a consumer will find it difficult to succeed”.

The Honourable Minister stressed that there is a need for us as a country to be bold enough in adopting indigenous solutions, consuming them and paying less attention to imported goods.

According to Pantami, ICT innovations do not discriminate. The COVID-19 pandemic has become one in which the World is united in finding a solution. Any digital solution to addressing any aspect of the challenges posed by the pandemic is welcome.

Pantami also expressed optimism that the innovations will be bankable and marketable to the local, national and international market places.

Dr Henry Nkemadu, Director of Research and development while making his opening remarks noted that 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.

According to Nkemadu, the Hackathon was designed to engage Startups to compete in a healthy manner in such a way as to improve our innovativeness.

Speaking further, Nkemadu imployed 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, agric, sectors etc.”

“When we 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.”

“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,” Nkemadu said.