BTNG Hackathon 2019: Day 2
Theme: Curbing the Effect of Brain-Drain in Emerging Economies
Day 2 of the Hackathon: Presentations, Winners, and People’s choice.
Day 2 was glorious.
Teams trooped at 10 am to continue their work from last night but more importantly to get ready for the presentations later in the afternoon. 14 teams in total all working on problems that help curb the effects of brain drain in emerging economies using Nigeria as a focal point.
The formations of the teams from Day 1 can be seen here.
Shortly after our late lunch, we were ready to begin.
We thanked our sponsors — Accenture, CcHub, Novo Gifts, and K.U.K Alliance, without whom this event would not have been possible.
Teams were sorted by alphabetical order and they presented as follows:
Brain Gain
Brain Gain created a platform that enables the collection of funds (from diaspora community) to finance local projects in Nigeria.
From their presentation deck: “Users (investors/donors) will be able to put money in, track and monitor the development of projects and the impact being achieved. The tracking and monitoring mechanisms will be detailed, specific and insightful: showing the business plan, how and when money is spent, progress against plan, and completion points.”
How it helps curb brain drain: Providing local projects with the much-needed funds, allows businesses/projects to thrive which in turn should reduce the effect of looking elsewhere for opportunities.
Bridge the Gap
Bridge the Gap built a platform to share knowledge with aspiring tech talent in Nigeria.
From their slides: “Bridge The Gap is a web application that offers mentorship as a service. The goal is to provide skilled people with the resources necessary to navigate their career in the tech industry.” View More Here
How it helps curb brain drain: Mentorship allows the diaspora to effect change by providing knowledge and resources for students on the ground.
Community Green Fingers (CGF)
The four members of CGF worked on a platform that allows local communities to build farms through aquaponics- an integrated system that combines fish farming with hydroponics.
From the slides: Community Green Fingers is “Creating an aquaponic farm to supply a food source and employment to local communities.”
How it helps curb brain drain: By enabling people with different forms of farming, more jobs can be created for the community and local people.
Faastrac
Using a pay as you use model, Faastrac aims to provide equipment to farmers to help cultivate their lands.
How it helps curb brain drain: By reducing the financial risk of farm equipment, the agriculture sector can grow which in turn will see an increase in the number of people employed in the industry reducing the effect of looking elsewhere for jobs.
Give Back
Give Back’s goal is to solve the problem of lack of visibility for donors on how charity funds are being used for projects in emerging economies.
To tackle this problem, Give Back will use blockchain technology to restore trust among donors.
From the slides: The use of blockchain enables the following “Transparency, Decentralized and global, Minimized expenses, Donation speed, Donation provisioning, Reduced taxes and Digital agreements”
HandsOn
HandsOn aims to outsource work from corporate firms in developed countries to highly skilled recent graduates based in Sub-Saharan Africa.
How it helps curb brain drain: Helps to solve the unemployment problem in Sub-Saharan Africa which often leads to skilled workers looking to work elsewhere if there are no local opportunities.
Hero Fabric
Hero Fabric’s programme provides ICT students in developing economies access to offline literary resources and connects the students with mentors in Diaspora.
From the slides: Hero Fabric “Connects heroes and side kicks, and provides heroes with books and other freely available books”.
Heroes == Mentors
Sidekicks == Students
Kobo
Kobo is a financial, business and personal development platform for entrepreneurial women in Nigeria. To start with, Kobo distributes micro-loans to small business owners and resources to help them achieve their business goals.
How it helps curb brain drain: Access to loans and business knowledge/info empowers women in sub-Saharan Africa to build and maintain businesses
Nigerian Health Service
Nigeria Health Service (NHS) built an application that connects Nigerian communities to health services, locally and virtually.
From the slides: NHS users can do three main things: “Locate workers and facilities nearby, Access immediate video consultations, Consult an online directory”.
Off-Grid Solar
Off-Grid Solar’s proposition offer’s a platform for diasporas to responsibly invest in solar technology to provide electrical power to rural Nigerian communities in need.
How it helps curb brain drain: From the slides, when country residents have “More confidence in local infrastructure [it] reduces the likelihood to leave”. Off-Grid Solar aim is to “Minimise brain drain by creating opportunities with access to power”.
Open Nigeria
Open Nigeria’s premise is to decentralise Crowdfunding of Nigerian Open Source Software
From the slides: “Investing in open-source blockchain projects through the UNICEF Venture Fund”. Typically makes “$50–100k investments in portfolios of emerging technologies”
Spora
A business process outsourcing solution for Nigerian diaspora entrepreneurs to provide job opportunities for skilled Nigerian graduates.
How it helps curb brain drain: By providing more job opportunities for a major demographic of the population, there is less likelihood for individuals to look opportunity elsewhere.
Team X
Team X delivered a platform called Boost that provides funds for children to continue their education by rounding off remittance transfers from the diaspora.
From the slides: “We think every child should have the opportunity to receive a good basic education. By rounding up your transfer, you can help children continue their education from primary school to college.”
Wazobia Health Network
Wazobia Health Network presented a platform for connecting Nigerian health diaspora with opportunities back home
How it helps curb brain drain: Wazobia Health Network turns the problem on its head and aims to introduce brain gain.
From the slides: “Research from published literature and independently obtained sources shows that the Nigerian health diaspora are eager to remotely contribute to the development of the country and the desire to return is directly proportional to the level of involvement in projects back home.”
Winners
The Winners as chosen by the Judges for the BTNG 2019 Hackathon were:
👏🏾🎉 Off-Grid Solar 👏🏾🎉 for their project offering Nigerians with Electrical power through solar energy.
People’s Choice Winners
The People’s Choice as chosen by fellow participants in BTNG 2019 Hackathon were Hero Fabric.
Well done to all the participants. We loved all the ideas and we hope you were inspired to build more around this problem.
Once again, thank you to all our sponsors.
More pictures from the event below. You can watch a video of your presentations here.
P.s. We have an upcoming event celebrating black history month and Nigeria Independence day in October. If you are interested, please sign up here.
