Nigerian School Girls Shine At Silicon Valley Pitch Contest

Five Anambra state school girls have made Nigeria proud in the World Technovation Challenge in the Silicon Valley in San Francisco, US.

The girls won the Gold medal in the contest which has put Nigeria and African in global world map of champions.

The Gold medalists namely Promise Nnalue, Jessica Osita, Nwabuaku Ossai, Adaeze Onuigbo, Vivian Okoye are students of Regina Pacies Secondary School Onitsha, Anambra state.

Reports say the girls who were led into the competition by Uchenna Onwuamaegbu Ugwu, defeated representatives of other technological giants including the USA, Spain, Turkey,Uzbekistan and China to clinch the gold medal.

The world champions who are reported to be attracting a lot of attention in the world’s greatest technological hub won the Challenge with a mobile application called the FD-Detector which they developed to help tackle the Challenge of fake pharmaceutical products in Nigeria.

Agency report says Uchenna Onwuamaegbu Ugwu, CEO of Edufun Technik STEM, led the team into the competition after five months of research and developing FD-Detector under his tutelage.

They competed against over 2000 applicants to get to the finals in San Francisco, the report says.

World Technovation Challenge in the Silicon Valley is a programme that offers girls around the world the opportunity to learn the programming skills they need to emerge as tech-entrepreneurs and leaders.

Every year, girls are invited to identify a problem in their communities, and then challenge them to solve them by developing Android applications that would address those problems.

115 countries participated in the qualifiers but only 12 teams from all over the world were selected as finalists for the pitch in Silicon Valley.

The girls will also be attending Field trips, life-changing workshops including a networking session during their one week stay in USA.

The Governor of Anambra State, Chief Willie Obiano had personally sent them off to the US in a brief ceremony at the last Executive Council Meeting where he charged the girls to put Nigeria and Africa on the global technological map with their rare talent.