Nigerian Startups Win $7,500 in Climate Change Hackathon
Nosa Alekhuogie
Three Nigerian technology startups have emerged winners from the EkoClimathon 1.0 challenge hosted by Eko Innovation Center.
The challenge, which was aimed at using technology to address the challenges of climate change in line with Nigeria’s long term vision to reduce Green House Gases to net zero by 2050, presented a pool of young tech startups across four continents to compete in a climate hackathon challenge working to create lasting solutions towards actualising this goal.
Speaking at the grand finale of the hybrid event which held in Lagos, the convener of the hackathon tagged EkoClimathon 1.0 and Chief Executive Officer, Eko Innovation Center, Mr. Victor Afolabi opined that the vision of the hackathon was beyond supporting startups with seed capital but largely focused on creating real-time solutions to the problems of human society and making the ecosystem more liveable for the future.
“Out of 1034 entries we were able to get 300 teams who went through three weeks of workathon where they worked and created stuffs after which they pictched to the selection jurors. After that, the jurors selected the best 10 teams from the initial 300 who went through the mentors nest where they were mentored and their ideas were improved with a number of collaborations globally to make their products fit for purpose.
“Today, they came to pitch and we only wanted three of them. We thank all our collaborators for their support and we hope that through this initiative, we can help fix this country, move our economy from an extractive economy to a more knowledge driven economy and a service oriented economy such that we can make our people live better lives,” he said.
Expressing his optimism about the sustainability of the initiative, Special Adviser to the Governor of Lagos state on Technology, Mr. Olatunbosun Alake noted that among other things, the state government is passionate about supporting initiatives, which encourages better human societies.
