A team of Nigerian students and technology innovators has made it to the 20-team shortlist for the $1 million Hult Prize. They are the only African team still in the competition.

The 2018 Hult Prize with theme ‘Harnessing the Power of Energy to Transform 10 Million Lives’, began from the campus level to regional level until it got to the global stage, while hundreds of participants/teams from many world class universities participated.

The team invented a smart Solar-Powered Irrigation System to ease irrigation farming and, alongside other competitors, would go all-out to make the 4-team shortlist in the UK.

The students, who have made the country proud thus far, are in the International Islamic University of Malaysia. They won the first position at the campus level and proceeded to the regional final in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital.

At the regional finals, there were 60 teams and 200 participants from some of the best universities across the world, including Canada, Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan and Taiwan.

One of the students and prime mover of the innovation, Faisal Sani Bala, said their work was on a new technology that boosts irrigation farming like never before and also provides light for rural communities without electricity.