Twelve-year-old Emerges as MTN mPulse Hackathon Champion for 2020

The second edition of the annual MTN mPulse Hackathon, recently got to its climax as the contestants pitched their tech-powered innovations to a panel of judges including Njideka Jack, Senior Manager, Business Enablement, MTN Nigeria; Oladimeji Joseph,Senior Manager, IT Quality Assurance & Compliance, MTN Nigeria;Dr. Itoro Emembolu, Director, TechQuest STEM Academy: Miss Aderonke Adeyegbe, Managing Director, Comercio Limited and Dr Ogechukwu N. Iloanusi, Senior Lecturer Ph.D Electronic Engineering, University of Nigeria.

The competition themed “Beyond COVID-19,” witnessed keen participation from young Nigerians aged between nine to fifteen years who are passionate about developing impactful tech-powered solutions. The competition is a unique way to develop the intuitive capacity of tech-savvy Nigerian youths, particularly in primary and secondary schools, to build a safer world of remote-based solutions that will outlive the COVID-19 era.

This was made evident during the virtual grand finale of the competition as young Nigerian students displayed innovative solutions which cut across the various sectors of the nation. However, Joshua Agboola, a 12 year old student of Bellina College in Lagos State, emerged as the overall winner of the MTN mPulse Hackathon for 2020 through his Kagukar Study Buddie, a web-based application designed to promote homeschooling through the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Speaking on the rationale behind the design of the website, Joshua said, “I hope to impact the Nigerian educational system by creating a web-based application that will enable Nigerian students access their school curriculum remotely. This is an all-encompassing app that also caters for the needs of visually-impaired students.” He further commended the organisers of the competition by saying, “I want to appreciate all the efforts put in by MTN Nigeria because this happens to be the most orderly hackathon I have participated.”

MTN mPulse Hackathon is a competition designed to support the spirit of innovation among the country’s youthful population. Joshua Agboola, alongside the other finalists will participate in a virtual MTN Gap bootcamp, while the top-three finalists received mouth-watering prizes including scholarship grants, cash vouchers, mobile electronic devices, and mPulse back-to-school items.