In the middle, Professor Olanike Adeyemo, nine awardees and others

Nine students of University of Ibadan, UI, have bagged the Geohackathon award for developing technology innovations, toward achieving Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, in Nigeria.

Disclosing this, the Vice Chancellor of the institution, Professor Abel Idowu Olayinka, who spoke to journalists through his Deputy on Research, Innovation and Strategic Partnerships, RISP, Professor Olanike Adeyemo noted that research from tertiary institutions should be tailored towards addressing societal problems.

At the award presentation event organised by RISP in collaboration with GIS Konsult Limited, Olayinka stated that Geohackathon indicates a series of activities that are well coordinated toward achieving a set goal.

He added, “Geohackathon competition is aimed at utilising innovative geo-spatial technologies to proffer solutions for sustainable development. This is season one of the Geohackathon series and participants guided by SDGs two, three, nine, 11, 12 and 13 have developed and submitted solutions in the some categories. The categories included Application/Product/Prototype, Innovative Industrial Research and Online StoryMap Journal”.

According to him, the University remained grateful to sponsors, especially Environmental Systems Research Institute, ESRI, for providing the software and to GIS Konsult Ltd for partnership pointing out that the event would assist with incubation of ideas arising from mentoring students and budding entrepreneurs.

In his speech, the Chief Executive Officer of GIS Konsult, Mr David Afolayan noted that the student innovators would be assisted until their innovations became marketable adding, “Through the Geohackathon, we are promoting Geo-Literacy and Geographic Information System as enabling technology to stimulate innovation across all disciplines. We believe this will revolutionise the education system to produce solution-oriented graduates. It is time for Africa to arise with solutions for Africa and indeed the world”.