Tijani urged Nigerian institutions to emulate Veritas University by grooming and raising young people, who could compete on the global stage.
The Veritas University, Abuja, has emerged overall winner at the third edition of the 2023 Africa Innovation Challenge with a cash prize of 20,000 dollars.
The winning school disclosed this on Friday while paying a visit to Dr Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy in Abuja.
The competition was held in Nairobi, Kenya, with the theme: “Innovating for Digital Inclusion: Solutions to Bridge the Digital Divide in Africa”.
Speaking on behalf of winning students, Daniel Inaju, a software engineering student of Veritas University, said the school presented numerous projects at the competition.
Inaju said smart farm and PHP framework made Veritas, Nigeria the overall winner of the challenge.
“The university was able to provide us with all the tools we needed to start working on solving problems.
“The first problem we solved was looking at the farming issues in Nigeria and to automate the whole process, we came up with a smart farm, which not only covers land farms but also fish farming and others.
“The system we came up with had a biometric system and sensor that we used to detect salinity and the PH of the soil. We were able to put all these components together to come up with a smart farm.
“We had sleepless nights and sometimes we slept in the lab just to get it right,” he said.
In his remarks, Tijani urged Nigerian institutions to emulate Veritas University by grooming and raising young people, who could compete on the global stage and represent the excellence expected by the country.
According to him, many nations now rely on research and development to progress. One can almost see the direct implications of the quality of academic institutions on the quality of the economy of any nation.
He said the essence of the event was for Veritas to become an inspiration to other Nigerian institutions.
According to him, humanity constantly looks for better ways to do things. This can only come through research and development.
He added that custodians of research and development were academic institutions.
“Other academic institutions should come up with groundbreaking research results that can ensure Nigeria is a true leader of the African continent.
“I want you to become a model university to others, that is why this event is extremely important.
“Hoping that you can inspire so many other academic institutions to be able to see their role as being much more than just training employees but helping to drive innovation that we need to see for our economy.
“We are an absolutely blessed nation, God has given us different resources but we need builders, innovators, entrepreneurs, who can help us take those resources and turn them into value that will add to our economy.”
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that Kenya’s Zetech University and Sierra Leone’s BlueCrest College also topped the African Telecommunications Union (ATU), and ATU Africa Innovation Challenge.
They emerged second and third runner-up with the sum of 10,000 and 5,000 dollars respectively.
-NAN
