Nigerian teenage girls dominate the world in Technovation World Pitch Summit

From August 6th to 10th girls around the world came in teams to participate in the 2018 Technovation challenge. The teenage girls from Nigeria emerged as the winners of this year’s competition.

Every year, the Technovation challenge invites girls from around the world to identify a problem in their community, and then challenge them to solve it. The girls, between the ages of 10 and 18 work in a team to build a mobile app and a business plan to launch the app, with guidance from Technovation’s curriculum and mentors.

The Nigerian team came from Onitsha, Anambra and their team name was Save-A-Soul. They created an app named FD-Detector (Fake Drug Detector). The girls, Adaeze Igbo, Jessica Osita, Nwabuaku Ossai, Promise Nnabue and Vivia Okoye won the Gold Medal at Technovation  for inventing a life-saving app that spots fake drugs in Nigeria.

Read: Five Kenyan high school girls create an app to end FGM

The Gold scholarship winners connecting in excitement. #WorldPitch 🎉👏🇵🇸🇳🇬 pic.twitter.com/VJPmXZCxzB

— Technovation (@technovation) August 10, 2018

Read: Ms Geek Africa encourages girls across Africa to use technology to improve lives

The team said, “Leveraging technology to save lives is our utmost priority, which is why we have decided to maximize this opportunity to solve the incessant rate of death caused by fake drugs.”

Nigeria’s Vice President Prof Yemi Osinbajo on Twitter said, “These young ladies in Junior Secondary School, developed a mobile application called ‘FD Detector’ to tackle the problems of fake pharmaceutical products in Nigeria. Yesterday, they won the 2018 Technovation World Pitch in California. Congratulations! We are very proud of you.”

Fake drugs have one of the largest markets in Nigeria. Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control was set up to regulate and control the manufacture, importation, exportation, advertisement, distribution, sale and use of food, drugs and other products. The Save-A-Soul team plans to partner  with the agency.