Anambra School Girls Win Gold in World Technovation Challenge in US
Girls in Technology!
The five Anambra girls from Regina Pacies Secondary School Onitsha who represented Nigeria and Africa at the World Technovation Challenge in the Silicon Valley in San Francisco, US last night have won the Gold Medal in the contest.
The team, led by Uchenna Onwuamaegbu Ugwu defeated representatives of other technological giants including the USA, Spain, Turkey, Uzbekistan and China to clinch the gold medal.
The Anambra girls who have now become Africa’s Golden Girls is made up of five brilliant girls including
1 Promise Nnalue
2 Jessica Osita
3 Nwabuaku Ossai
4 Adaeze Onuigbo
5 Vivian Okoye
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.
Under the tutelage of Uchenna Onwuamaegbu-Ugwu the CEO of Edufun Technik STEM, the Golden Girls spent five months researching and developing FD-Detector which swept through over 2000 competing applications to get to the finals in San Francisco.
Technovation 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 Andriod 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.
The suspension has been a big surprise to us : OAU Students
Students of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, have reacted with a mixture of surprises to the National Universities Commission recent suspension of accreditation for six of the courses offered in the institution.
The NUC, according to a report by The Cable, had suspended the university’s Law, Dentistry, Botany, Fine and Applied Arts, Family Nutrition and Consumer Science programmes.
Initially, Medical Rehabilitation was listed among the courses, but investigation showed that it was not really affected by the commission’s decision.
Some of the students of the institution whose courses were affected by the development, in separate telephone interviews with our correspondent, said they thought the suspension was just a “joke” from the NUC. One of them, a 300 level law student, Badrudeen Olawale, wondered how the commission arrived at the decision not to accredit OAU’s law for the 2018/2019 academic session.
He said, “The suspension has been a big surprise to us. Many of us still find it difficult to believe that the NUC could do this to Obafemi Awolowo University. I can tell you that the Faculty of Law here is one of the best in the country in terms of structure, facilities and academic prowess. What else does the commission want the faculty to provide?
Shun needless travels, NYSC DG tells corps members
The Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps, Brig.Gen. Suleiman Kazaure, has charged corps members across the country to be security conscious and avoid unnecessary travels and reckless movements during their service year.
Kazaure also advised them to always move in groups within the locality of their areas of primary assignments.
The NYSC DG spoke on Saturday after inspecting facilities at the Imo State NYSC orientation camp at Eziama Obaire, Nkwerre Council Area of Imo State.
Kazaure, who is the 17th DG of the NYSC established in 1973, also cautioned the corps members against indecent dressing and indulgence in night parties. He urged them to respect the traditions of their host communities.