As part of its capacity building initiatives, Intel has reaffirmed its commitment to grow Nigeria software industry through its support to the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) Hackathon series for brilliant software developers, policy experts and students where Software developer teams Data Mart emerged winner of One Million Naira and acceptance into an incubation program.
The winning team emerged victor over 14 other teams after satisfying the Judges’ criteria of Innovation and Ambition, User Interface and Experience, Overall Quality of the software solution and App Impact.
The event which held at Idea Nigeria over the weekend was the grand finale of a three-day Hackathon series. The fund was targeted towards facilitating access to affordable telecommunications services for greater social equity and inclusion for the people of Nigeria.
Speaking at the event, Business Development Director, Intel Corporation, and Judge at the event, Stanley Muoneke, stated that he was glad to be a part of expanding and advising USPF’s processes.
Muoneke said, “At Intel, we are extremely passionate about furthering IT development in the Nigerian landscape and supporting initiatives which are targeted towards giving innovative Nigerians an outlet to express themselves. Capacity building is an area where Intel remains a forerunner with the required competence in engaging the Nigerian populace to bridge the digital divide. It is for this reason that we have chosen to support with USPF in pioneering this laudable initiative.”
The winning team, Data Mart, whose solution was a data market place for people to buy and sell data with visualization, analytics and natural language search; expressed its gratitude to the Judges and USPF Hackathon for organizing the competition and encouraging growing developers in Nigeria.
According to its spokesman Obinna Igbokwe, “We are very excited at winning the grand prize and we are grateful to the Judges for seeing potentials in our software solution.”
The Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) was established by the Federal Government of Nigeria to facilitate the achievement of national policy goals for universal access and universal service to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the rural, un-served and under-served areas in Nigeria.
