By Okuanwan Offiong
Lagos – Qataloog, a Lagos ICT developer, on Thursday emerged winner of the maiden Emerging Technologies Research (ETR) Competition organised by the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC).
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Qataloog’s project on learning content for students beat 20 other participants from eight states to clinch the N3 million prize.
WICRYPT from Enugu came second with WiFi Hotsport Sharing project and went home with N2 million prize, while Phaheem Pharmaceuticals Ltd from Kano came third and got N1 million prize.
Mr Ephraim Nwokenneya, NCC Director of Research and Development, said the commission would continue to support the winning participants to help them to the next level.
“It’s quite amazing to see the brilliant ideas a lot of Nigerian youths do have, what we are doing with this forum is to provide them a platform to present their ideas.
“Their ideas must be novel, focused towards addressing a problem, providing solutions, using technology and they must be bankable and commercially viable and they must have social impact to the society.
“We are quite amazed at the quality of ideas being brought to the table, and we also try to guide them to make sure that they put the ideas in a business plan that could be bankable,” said the NCC official.
Mr Chris Uwaje, Chairman of the judging panel, said the initiative was targeted at innovation hubs in the country to showcase what they have been able to do.
“Kids in Nigeria are now into IT innovations and ideas that have not been discovered, we are in an era of discovery of talent of youths in Nigeria.
“I think this is what government must encourage by having such event quarterly to take to the world and showcase, and thereafter to a specialised domain where there will be competition for technology delivery for health, cyber security, education and all other sectors, including law,” he said.
(NAN)
