Justice on Hold: FG files for 22-month extension to challenge landmark Journalist safety ruling - ITREALMS

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The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) has approached the Court of Appeal, asking for an "extension of time" to challenge a landmark judgment that ordered the government to investigate and prosecute the killers of journalists, reports ITREALMS.

This 22-month delay centers on a motion filed on December 23, 2025, by Mr. A.B. Mohammed on behalf of the AGF, which seeks to bypass the standard legal window for appeals. Under Section 24(2)(a) of the Court of Appeal Act, the government had exactly three months to appeal the February 16, 2024, judgment delivered by Justice Inyang Ekwo. 

NCC licences Six new ISPs to challenge telcos, satellite giants - ITREALMS

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The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has officially granted operating licences to six new Internet Service Providers (ISPs), signalling a major push to deepen competition in Nigeria’s broadband market, reports ITREALMS. 

The new licences, which became effective on January 1, 2026, ITREALMS gathered, have increased the total number of authorised ISPs in the country to 231, up from 225 recorded in December 2025. 

Anambra wins National Primary Healthcare leadership challenge - ITREALMS

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In what has become a continuing recognition of Anambra State Governor Chukwuma Charles Soludo’s signature innovative leadership and unparalleled commitment to human capital development, Anambra State has emerged victorious at the esteemed National Primary Healthcare Leadership Challenge, clinching two coveted awards: Best State in the Southeast Zone and the Overall Best State in Nigeria.

The state received a grand prize totaling $1.2 million - $500,000 as the best in the Southeast and an additional $700,000 as the national overall best. These accolades spotlight Anambra’s undeniable strides in enhancing primary healthcare delivery, an authentication of the exceptional governance of Governor Soludo, who places a high premium on the holistic wellbeing of Ndi Anambra.

Agbata: Dearth of digital infrastructure, bane of tech adoption in South East - ITREALMS

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The governments of the five Southeastern states must begin to invest in digital infrastructure to boost the chances of effective digital adoption and open up myriads of tech opportunities in the region.

The managing director/ chief executive officer, Anambra State ICT Agency, Mr. Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata “CFA”, made the call when he appeared as a keynote speaker at last month’s conference of the International Igbo Professionals for Development (IIPD).

2023 Inspiration Challenge: OPPO invests USD $440,000 - ITREALMS

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OPPO Research Institute in global partnership with the Qualcomm Technologies, GSMA 5G IN, Amazon Web Services and LinkedIn, announced the launch of 2023 OPPO Inspiration Challenge on the World Smile Day. Based on the brand proposition of "Inspiration Ahead", OPPO and its global technology ecosystem partners aim to bring new and innovative solutions to life by providing funding, support and partnership opportunities. By working together, OPPO hopes these innovations can create a positive impact, and encourage greater awareness of the issues that affect global communities.

2023 OPPO Inspiration Challenge – Call for proposals
OPPO and partners pledged funding and technical support for innovative proposals.

US$500m challenge: Gavi launches INFUSE 2.0 - ITREALMS

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Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance has launched INFUSE 2.0, an innovation scaling hub to accelerate immunisation systems upgrades for the world’s most in-need countries, and worth $500million, reports ITREALMS.

INFUSE 2.0, ITREALMS gathered, comes with features as collective of commercial and philanthropic investors focused on supporting global health entrepreneurs. The initiative also introduces a first-of-its-kind digital platform to simplify connections between communities, innovators and the private sector to make it easier and faster to share expertise. Impact evaluators will also help start-ups, investors and stakeholders better track and amplify the impact of their innovations on immunisation and global health.

Beware! TikTok challenge circulates information-stealing Malware says NCC - ITREALMS

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The Nigerian Communications Commission's Computer Security Incident Response Team (NCC-CSIRT) has warned about the potential harm of taking part in the Invisible Challenge on short-form video hosting service, TikTok, revealing that it exposes devices to information-stealing Malware.

An NCC-CSIRT advisory said threat actors have taken advantage of a viral TikTok challenge, known as the Invisible Challenge, to disseminate an information-stealing malware known as the WASP (or W4SP) stealer.

Health insurance, major challenge for hospital operators - ITREALMS

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The Chief Medical Director (CMD), United Heart Hospital and Clinic Dr. Eugene Nwaosu, has lamented that the major challenge of running hospital in Nigeria is inability of Nigerians to enroll into health insurance to reduce out of pocket payments.

He said most Nigerians do not have health insurance, rather payment is made at the point of service as good number of those with health insurance coverage is very poor and this has affected hospital operators in the country.

Yakubu: Undemocratic takeover of govt, great challenge to ECONEC - ITREALMS

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The undemocratic takeover of government in some West African countries has created a great challenge for Electoral Commissions in the sub-region, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu.

Speaking at a plenary of the ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions’
(ECONEC) 7th Biennial General Assembly holding in Accra, Ghana, Prof. Yakubu also described the development as a democratic and electoral retrogression which underscores the need for free, fair, and credible elections.

Pantami: The challenge of scholarship - ITREALMS

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In the past few years, one of the challenges the country have had to grapple with is the level of bigotry, which has dominated our socio-political discourse. Such is the sensitivity of this issue that it has permeated all sectors and affected the perceptions of citizens to decisions and or appointment into offices irrespective of whether such are done with good intentions by the appropriate and or approving authorities.

Pantami and FUTO scholarship

Today, one of the youngest and scholarly personalities on the federal government of Nigeria, Professor Isa Pantami, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy is in the eyes of the storm for various reasons.

Inequality greatest challenge to Nigeria's economy - Fayemi

Personality@ITREALMS:

Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State recently spoke with REMMYNWEKE, Editor, ITREALMS, a member of the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) in Ado-Ekiti on his second missionary journey and development in Nigeria, asserting that creating opportunities will enable a better society, inequality remains the greatest challenge to Nigeria's economy.

Excerpts.

You have been running the government for 100 days without complaining that the last government rendered you ineffective. How come governance has been running smoothly?

Second missionary journeys are by their nature not given to excuses. If I were to start giving excuses you will ask me that you were there before don’t you know that is how things would be? And if you know that’s how it would be, are you not prepared for the eventuality? Not making excuses is not to suggest that things were in absolutely perfect condition. They were not. Things had degenerated but I was not elected to reel out what’s bad about the situation. I was elected to make it better and that’s what we’ve been trying to do. The resources are not what they used to be; they are much lower but we managed within the available resources to make life better for the people.

I’ve been here for less than three months and we’ve paid four months salaries for that period. We’ve settled pensions for that period. We’ve even started paying severance of past political office holders who were not in a position to receive their severance in that period. We’ve re-introduced free education in the state. We’ve introduced free health programme. We are starting a health mission across the state. Our empowerment programmes are restarting, putting back about 10,000 school leavers back to the school volunteer programme that we used to run.

Basically, for us, we just feel very strongly that our people deserve a new lease of life. They have had a pretty rough ride in the last four years. Lessons have been learned across the board. So, to start giving excuses or to start explaining away the challenges that we have… Challenges will always be there but our duty, and if you recall in my inaugural speech the day I was sworn in, we made a pledge that on our 100th day I will give a state of the state address that will explain in details what we met here.

Part of the reasons why we have been talking or giving interviews or saying this is what went wrong in the past is that we felt the people needed to have a full picture and we didn’t want to do it by our own reckoning so we hired Pricewaterhouse Coopers to do a forensic audit of the state. They are still here and by Thursday we will make the outcome of their investigations public. It is then up to you to do independent verification of what they’ve come up with in terms of the finance of the state particularly and in terms of the way things have been run. We want an independent, credible audit firm to do this and release that information.

Are you confident President Muhammadu Buhari will be re-elected?

It is in my own personal interest for the President to be re-elected. So, let me put my interest upfront so that there is no doubt in my mind. I am also a political scientist and to the best of my knowledge - I don’t want to be complacent - I think the President has a very good chance of being re-elected. Every evidence I can see before me, in spite of the feelings that may be one of disappointment in certain circles because the expectation was much when we came in. Have we met the expectation of the public in its totality? Absolutely not. But, have we done a much better job of protecting the commonwealth of the people? I’d like to think we have. I think it’s going to be a question at the end of the day for the voter who is best placed to protect our interest across the board.

I think the President will win the election.

What is your agenda for women in the spirit of balance for better and also against the backdrop that your wife is a champion of the cause of women?

I would like to think that for us we operate by law to the best of our ability. We were the first state, before it even became a national debate, to pass the equal opportunities law in Nigeria. That was informed by our belief that there is no way you can build a better society by reinforcing patriarchy. You just have to find means of broadening the base, protecting the minorities, creating opportunities that will enable us to have a better society.

Unfortunately, things have gone pear-shaped, in the four years that we have been away here, some of the things we’ve noticed are quite shocking. Rape incidents have increased in Ekiti yet Ekiti was the first state to actually put in place a sexual violence register.

We’ve also noticed that we’ve suffered significantly from either disinterestedness on the part of the government or general malaise in the society. Fifty-five percent of our girls are now out of school in the state that used to have the highest enrolment in the whole of the country – 96 per cent enrolment as of 2014 when I was leaving. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know why we have those problems.

If you don’t pay workers on the one hand, and on the other hand you impose an education tax, somebody who has not eaten will not send a child to school especially in the rural areas and that’s why one of the very first things I did the day I was sworn in was to cancel the education levy and reintroduce free education in the state because that’s one of the basic ways to create equal opportunity.

If there’s no equality of access there’s no way you are going to create opportunities for all particularly for the girl child who is disadvantaged anyway from being educated.

So we start from that and I know we like to play a game of numbers. How many people do you have in your cabinet who are women? How many do you have in your House of Assembly who are women? How many do you have in this and that? Whilst I think it’s important to recognise presence and more because if you have people of a particular gender they tend to understand the problems of the gender better than others, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s going to be like that. I don’t really have a cabinet per se yet. But I’m going to and it’s not going to take too long.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) is presently not as coherent as it was in 2015. You had members in the National Assembly who were more like opposition and you have governors sponsoring candidates in parties. How do you think the electorate who fought to see the APC come into power, would feel?

Parties are not paragons of excellence. Parties are products of the social milieu too and they would always contain the good, the bad and the ugly. So, the reality is that APC is not different. We are not organic enough yet partly by the nature of our formation and coming together, partly because of the exigencies of the times and those who are not fulfilled by nature. Nigerians are not particularly promoters of delayed gratification whether in political parties or in government or in journalism. We want quick results, we want quick wins.

Every journalist comes here and asks me about quick wins. They don’t want to ask me about long term development goals. We are victims of that in the APC too. You can say we are victims of our quick success. Our party was formed in 2013. By March 2015 we won an election, even though we were still at the time not organic, there were still variegated interests being pursued by members of the party.

You then ended up with different centres of power in the party and people started hobnobbing with different centres of power. It’s just the nature of politics but then it’s not unique to us.

Even parties that are long established, I mean there is a civil war going on within the Republican Party in America. There is a massive civil war going on within the Tories in the United Kingdom. Even in much more mature, settled democracy, it’s taken four months for Sweden to form a government. So maybe we are not as bad as it seems but we are not as good as we would like to be. But APC is a party of the future.

President Muhammadu Buhari said some time ago that the economy is in bad shape. If President Buhari should win the election, with what you know about the economy, what would you advise him to do to ensure that we keep the economy running for the society to be better?

For me the greatest challenge in this economy is inequality. It’s not even poverty. This is not the only society where you have poor people, but it’s the gap between the mindlessly rich and the hopelessly poor that I see as the greatest challenge that we must address. How do we address that without focusing on social investment? We are only scratching the surface.

I don’t like to take credit for it but many of the things we were doing here before I went into the wilderness. When I went into the wilderness I had the opportunity of serving as the person in charge of policy and manifesto in our party. We tried to introduce all of that, our social security for the elderly, our youth volunteer scheme, those are the things that are now known as N-Power, conditional cash transfer, Trader Moni and all that. But we are only scratching the surface.

All together in the last three years that government have effectively run the budget, we haven’t even spent N300 billion on the social investment programmes. And in that same period, we have spent N700 billion to rescue Keystone Bank. We are probably going to spend more to rescue Skye Bank in its latter-day form as Polaris.

If you consider how much we spend, N6 trillion to rescue banks in the previous era, if we pour that into the hopeless and hapless segment of our population maybe we begin to address this disempowering impact of inequality on our society but it’s not just by dashing out cash to people, it’s by creating opportunities for our people as well and I think that’s where we have not done enough.

We’ve scratched the surface as I’ve said. We’ve done a lot. We now earn 60 percent less than what we used to earn and yet we are doing a lot more. People don’t give us too much credit for what we are doing and I don’t think it’s your fault. It’s also partly our fault. We are not as friendly with the media and we are not giving information as we ought to. Maybe we need training from you on how to package our views so they become more accessible and readable and available to the public but all of the things that we said we were going to do in our manifesto, in terms of concrete impact on the population, we’ve actually started.

But the way to juxtapose that is – What was the situation beforehand? Where were we? Where are we now? And where would we like to be? So for me, the advice that I will give first is that we must not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Some good is going on in this country but our search for the perfect is probably beclouding our own honest sense of perspective of the good that is happening and that cannot be blamed on the citizenry. It has to be blamed on leadership.

We have to make that information as available as possible. Is this the best that we can be? Absolutely not. So when I hear objective criticisms of our government, I take it. I’m a local politician I’m not an Abuja minister so I hear a lot more. I spent the entire day in the market today with the Vice President and people genuinely expressed their concern. I went on a home visit with the Vice President this afternoon and an old man, 80-year-old, actually spoke from the heart about what we are all experiencing. I don’t know anyone who is not experiencing it in the country. The man told us that “Look I’m 80 I really don’t need anything. But Mr Vice President, can you just make sure that my children get jobs? They are graduates, they don’t have jobs.”

I don’t know any home in this country where you don’t have two, three, four unemployed graduates. I know the number of text messages I get even in small Ekiti from our people. Those are the areas that I think we can make a difference and we can lift our people out of poverty. It’s been done in many other places, so there’s no reason why we cannot spend the next four years focusing on that.

There are some things that we have not paid enough attention to. We need a quicker turnaround in decision making and implementation. We need to be more responsive to the yearnings of our people so that they don’t feel we are taking them for granted and we need to focus on better alternatives than (crude) oil and I don’t know any better alternative in other countries that have found themselves in our situation – Vietnam, Indonesia, China – you name it, the first route is agriculture, out of poverty. It’s when they’ve done that that they then move on to manufacturing, industrialisation.

But we can jump the hoop. We don’t have to re-invent the wheel because these things have been done elsewhere and I believe that Nigeria holds the hope for black people in the world. We need to demonstrate by example.

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Finalists emerge @Ecobank Fintech Challenge 2018 - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

Ecobank, the leading independent pan-African banking group, has announced the finalists for the 2nd edition of the annual Ecobank Fintech Challenge, a competition for Africa-focused technology start-ups, reports ITRealms. The list includes eleven (11) fintech start-ups from across the continent and beyond. An Innovation Fair & Awards ceremony will honour the start-ups on August 30, 2018 at the global headquarters of Ecobank in Lomé, Togo. At the ceremony, the start-ups will exhibit and pitch their products to a jury for the Ecobank Africa Fintech Prize, which will be awarded the top innovator and two runners-up. The top three innovators will win cash prizes worth US$10,000, US$7,000, and US$5,000 respectively. After the Awards ceremony, Ecobank will enroll all eleven finalists into the Ecobank Fintech Fellowship. The Fellowship will run for a period of six months during which Ecobank Fintech Fellows will benefit from an opportunity to further explore partnerships with the Ecobank Group that includes: Multinational product roll-out support: for the start-ups deemed commercially viable to grow their businesses across any of Ecobank’s 33 markets in Africa; Service provider & ecosystem partner deals: for start-ups with deep capabilities to become product partners within Ecobank’s ecosystem; Technical & mentoring support: during the six months fellowship period, fellows will benefit from technical support from Ecobank’s global network of technology leaders, fintech experts, investors and management coaches. The eleven start-ups are: Lypa (Kenya), Wallet.ng (Nigeria), Nala (Tanzania), Litee (Benin), SESO Global (South Africa), InvestED (Sierra Leone), Eversend (France), Secapay (Nigeria), Virtual Identity (South Africa), MojiPay (Togo), Awamo (Germany) Group CEO of Ecobank, Ade Ayeyemi, said: “At Ecobank our digital strategy is spectacularly successful and has changed the landscape of African banking, so it goes without saying that we see fintech as a vital component for the economic transformation of the continent and the prosperity of its citizens. We want to do all we can to encourage the next generations of fintech entrepreneurs as they will be a driving force in propelling Africa into a globally competitive power in commercial services, enjoying significantly increased market share.” Eddy Ogbogu, Ecobank Group Executive for Operations and Technology commented: “Africa has a proud history of innovation, and today’s fintech start-ups are the potential giants of tomorrow. We’re delighted by the quality of our Fintech Challenge finalists and have high hopes that they will capitalise on the mentoring and support opportunities of the Ecobank competition on their journeys to future success.” The Ecobank Fintech Challenge is designed in partnership with the advisory firm Konfidants and is supported by partners across Africa and the world. More information can be found on the Program’s website at http://EcobankFintech.com. You can also interact with us on social media via our Facebook page and Twitter page.

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Paradigm takes NGOs on Google Impact Challenge @ 7 cities - ITREALMS Online

ITREALMS:

Seven cities across the federation would play host to series of workshops dedicated to nonprofit and social enterprises interested in applying for the 2018 Google Impact Challenge Nigeria, courtesy of Paradigm Initiative partnership with Google, reports ITRealms.

The workshop, ITRealms gathered is being organized by Paradigm Initiative on behalf of Google in Aba, Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Jos, Port Harcourt and Yola between June 25 and 27, 2018.

Director of Programmes, Paradigm Initiative, Tope Ogundipe, confirmed this to ITRealms, saying that the Google Impact Challenge is an important project design to empower Nigerian nonprofits and social enterprises with important resources to help deepen their work.

“The application workshops will help prospective applicants understand what the challenge is all about, its rules and the intricacies of putting forward a strong application,” she declared.

Ogundipe also said that Google is looking for 12 most innovative nonprofits and social enterprises in Nigeria and Paradigm Initiative wants to ensure that everyone doing great work in their communities stand a chance to making the cut.

“This is why we are organizing the workshop in all the 6 geopolitical zones and the federal capital territory. Great ideas are everywhere and we hope all the worthy ideas are able to compete on an equal footing. Those interested in the workshop can go to our website paradigmhq.org to register,” she said.

Ogundipe further said that the Google Impact Challenge Nigeria is an open invitation to nonprofits, social enterprises and businesses in Nigeria to share their vision for innovative ways to make our community stronger and create social impact, with a specific focus on increasing economic opportunity.

ITRealms equally gathered that judges for the 6-month challenge would include MI Abaga, John Momoh, Parminder Vir OBE, Kanu Nwankwo and Mo Abudu.

Uj. N. Dominic/GEE

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Nigeria missing @Facebook Messenger Developer challenge

ITRealms:

Nigerian mobile application developers were conspicuously missing on the winners of the first-ever Bots for Messenger Developer Challenge which ended recently in the city of Cairo by Facebook, reports ITRealms. This is coming as Egyptian developers swept the top three finalists at the challenge within the three winning categories for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from 60 finalists as part of the challenge. ITRealms recalls that the Bots for Messenger Challenge was launched on February 15th this year, in 64 countries across the MENA region to recognize and reward developers who were able to create the most innovative new bots on Messenger. The 3 top winners, ITRealms reports, won a prize of $20,000 USD and three months of Facebook mentorship. In addition from the Middle East and North Africa, three runner-up teams won $10,000 and three months of Facebook mentorship. The announcement was made via Facebook Live by Ime Archibong, Facebook's Vice President of Platform Partnerships, on Monday. MENA Runner-up/ Winning teams of these three categories are: Gaming and Entertainment Winner: Trivoxx from Morocco, winner of gaming and entertainment category, is a bot that allows one’s or a group of friends test their trivia on sports, science, and cities in three languages: Arabic, French, and English. Runner-up: Mastermind Games Bot from Egypt is a collection of five interactive games to solve codes based on various combinations of logic and memory. Every time a user guesses the correct code, a cave safe will open to obtain a diamond. Users can share games with their friends as they vie for the top scores. Productivity and Utility Winner: If you like to read books, then you'll agree that Mr. Ink from Egypt is the winner in the Social Good category. Users can either type a book name, or snap a photo of the book cover, to obtain information about the book including its author, rating, and book description. Runner-up: Evii from Jordan helps customers order and pick up food via its bot. Evii seize the opportunity to expand by building more end-to-end customers tools. Social Good Winner: MathHook from Egypt, is the winner in the Social Good category. It brings math into everyone’s life by helping users to solve complex math problems and search for math courses on YouTube across 3000 math videos. There's also a chat function to connect users with teachers or other students to solve math problems. MathHook is also a student submission to this Challenge. Runner-up: Adam (9 months) from Egypt aims to create community for pregnant women via tools and guidance, and safe communication channels between community members. Adam utilizes additional features such as location services to let users search for nearby pregnancy care, baby or maternity places. It also has an analytics tool to log user actions in custom events with custom parameters to better understand community perspectives. Says Emeka Afigbo, Facebook’s Head of Platform Partnerships for the Middle East and Africa: “It's been nearly five months since we first invited submissions for the 2017 Bots for Messenger Challenge and we're excited to share the winners. We were incredibly impressed with the bot submissions we received and the commitment to excellence that all the contestants have demonstrated, since the launch of the contest. We congratulate all the winners, wish them luck and thank all of the participants for making the Bots for Messenger Challenge a success! We look forward to seeing these bots continue to evolve into strong services for their communities.”

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Facebook picks 60 finalists in Bots for Messenger Developer Challenge

ITRealms:

Facebook has selected 60 finalists from the hundreds of entries received from across the Middle East and Africa for its Bot Messenger Developer Challenge, reports ITRealms.

The Bots for Messenger Challenge, ITRealms gathered, is a contest to recognise and reward developers who create the most innovative new bots on Messenger.

ITRealms reports that developers, in teams of up to three people, were invited to create bots in three categories: gaming and entertainment; productivity and utility; and social good.

The 60 finalist teams, ITRealms reports which made up of 10 per category in Middle East/North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa; each won a Gear VR and mobile phone, one hour of Facebook mentorship, and tools and services from FbStart, a Facebook program designed to help early stage mobile start-ups build and grow their bots. All student teams who made it to the finals won an additional $2,000.

According to Facebook’s Head of Platform Partnerships for the Middle East and Africa, Emeka Afigbo, the finalists will be contact and connect them with a mentor.

“They will need to resubmit their bots before midnight (GMT) on June 2 to qualify to win. For each region, three runner-up teams (one from each category) will win $10,000 and three months of Facebook mentorship. For each region, three winning teams (one from each category) will win $20,000 and three months of Facebook mentorship,” he said.

Afigbo also said, Facebook grew out of a hacker culture and thrives by promoting innovation on new platforms. Stressing that's why they launched the Bots for Messenger Challenge, with the aim of rewarding entrepreneurs and developers for harnessing the power of bots to create amazing new services and apps.

“We were overwhelmed to receive more than 1,000 entries over two and a half months for the Bots for Messenger Challenge from developers and entrepreneurs across the Middle East and Africa—each one of them solving a problem in an inventive way or enriching the lives of its target user,” Afigbo said.

Nonye Dom/GEE 

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Boko Haram Export: Gov. Obiano reassures Anambrarians, matter’ll be resolved

ITRealms:

The Governor of Anambra State, Chief Willie Obiano, has responded to the challenge of the Boko Haram detainees transferred to Aguata Prisons in the state, calling for calm, ITRealms reports.

The Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Dr. (Mrs) Uju Nwogu revealed to ITRealms that extensive consultations are on-going.

She quoted the Governor as assuring that all relevant authorities concerned as far as this issue is concerned are being reached. 

“The matter would certainly be resolved in the very near future,” he said.

Chief Willie Obiano reiterated that as the Governor of Anambra State, he remained the most concerned and disturbed always, over any issue bothering his people. 

“Ndi Anambra are therefore requested to be calm, remain law abiding and go about their normal businesses as His Excellency would explore all means to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,” Gov. Obiano solicited.
 
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Winners emerge in Orange Data for Development Challenge 2014/2015

ITRealms:

 

Orange has announced the winners of this year’s Data for Development (D4D) Challenge in Senegal which ran from 2014 to April 2015 in conjunction with Sonatel and Orange under the patronage of the Senegalese Ministry of Higher Education and Research, ITRealms reports.

The winners of the challenge, University of Manchester and the Santa Fe Institute, ITRealms learnt clinched the first prize of US$5000.00 (approximately 995,000.00 Naira), for using mobile phone data for electrification planning, with support from the Université Cheikh Anta Diop.

The challenge as gathered by ITRealms was organised around five core questions and themes relating to health, agriculture, transportation/urban planning, energy and national statistics; identified with the Senegalese Ministries or partner institutions, and designed specifically to challenge organisations to produce solutions for the purpose of societal development and the welfare of the population in Senegal.

Special consideration was also awarded for progress made in data sciences, anonymisation, big data ethics and to foster greater involvement with local organisations and promote education in this growing field.

Other prizes as learnt by ITRealms went as follows; Agriculture Prize for Genesis of millet prices in Senegal; Health Prize for Uncovering the impact of human mobility on schistosomias; National Statistics Prize for Virtual Networks and Poverty Analysis in Senegal; Transport Prize for National and Regional Road Network Optimisation for Senegal; Scientific and Ethics Mention price for Construction of socio-demographic indicators with digital breadcrumbs; Data Crossing Prize for Using mobile phone data for Spatial Planning simulation and Optimisation Technologies (SPOT); Data Visualisation Prize for O05, Data for Development Reloaded: Visual Matrix Techniques for the Exploration and Analysis of Massive Mobile Phone Data, and Practical Application Prize for Mobile Data as Public-Health Decision Enabler.

The competition as gathered by ITRealms was overseen by an External Ethics Panel comprising twelve members from across academia, business, public and non-profit organisations and the final winning entries were selected by the D4D Committee.

Daniel Nsolibe/GEE

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