By Seun Adams
The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), through its subsidiary, the Office for Nigerian Digital Innovation (ONDI), in partnership with the Innovation Support Network (ISN), is hosting the NITDA Digital Nigeria Hackathon 2023, scheduled to hold on 24th of October 2023 at the International Conference Centre (ICC), Abuja.
The Digital Nigeria International Conference and Exhibition is the flagship awareness programme in the Digital Economy sector. This year’s event with the theme: “Harnessing Digital Technologies for Job Creation, Inclusive Economic Growth, and Sustainability”, is rebranded to expand the scope in line with the core objectives of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS).
In line with the above, the Digital Nigeria Hackathon, offers participants the chance to tackle national challenges by leveraging emerging technology.
It is focused on building a digital Nigeria, where participants employ creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking to tackle problems measurably and systematically.
Additionally, the NITDA Digital Nigeria Hackathon 2023 is targeted at achieving the under-listed objectives:
● Local content development and promotion of ideas to be developed into products and homegrown solutions.
● To leverage young talented Nigerians to produce innovative ideas and products to solve socioeconomic problems and guide tech entrepreneurship to provide solutions to existing challenges across various sectors in Nigeria.
● To match tech entrepreneurs with the appropriate public institution right from idea generation.
● Exportation of digital services for economic expansion.
● To activate fresh thinking by connecting innovators from diverse backgrounds and sectors.
Participating startup founders will be allowed to express creativity within their business case and encouraged to develop unique solutions with an emphasis on using the latest technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud, Big data, Virtual blockchain, Quantum computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR)and Virtual Reality (VR) to come up with clearly defined ideas and prototypes solutions on e-Digital Literacy and Inclusion, e-Creative Media; e-Government Services, e-Subsidy Removal/Mobility and e- Financial Inclusion Technology.
Consequently, finalists will pitch their ideas and teams at the event and a winner will receive the Digital Nigeria Innovation Prize. After the hackathon, the winning team will be provided the support to continue to build their solution into a commercial venture.
Participants are, therefore, expected to identify relevant problem areas and propose solutions to address them.
