The Executive Governor of Anambra State, Chief Willie Obiano, has offered scholarships to the five young girls from Regina Pacis Model Secondary School Onitsha, Anambra State who won the Gold Medal at the World Technovation Challenge 2018 which took place in the Silicon Valley, San Francisco, USA.
The team, named Save A Soul, comprises of five brilliant girls: Jessica Osita, Promise Nnalue, Adaeze Onuigbo, Nwabuaku Ossai, and Vivian Okoye who represented Nigeria and Africa in the contest. The girls developed the “FD-Detector”, an app that combats the menace of fake drugs in Nigeria. The app can ascertain the genuineness of a drug by just scanning the barcode.
In a statement by the Special Adviser Media to the Governor, Mr. James Eze, aside from the scholarships, the girls were also given a cash prize of N1m each and decorated with the Crest of Anambra State and issued a Certificate of Merit in recognition of the honour they had brought Anambra State, to Nigeria and to Africa.
Speaking at a reception organized in honour of the girls at the Governor’s Lodge in Amawbia on Monday, Governor Obiano told the parents of the girls that the Government of Anambra State had taken over the responsibility of their education up to the Bachelor’s Degree level.
The Governor described them as “a group of amazing girls who recently dazzled the world with their talent,” He observed that “they have, therefore, turned this special day into Gold. They did it with their outstanding brilliance, their quest for knowledge and their search for a happier world. And I am immensely proud of them.”
And according to Mrs. Uche Onwuamaegbu-Ugwu, the mentor and coach of the girls said: “Winning for me is a vocation. When we repeat this feat next year and two years from now, that is winning for me. We cannot win just once. But we need a lot of support to keep winning. I love the celebration that has gone on across the world but in my head, I am thinking, how do we duplicate this? How do we reach other girls?”
Technovation is a program that offers girls around the world the opportunity to learn the programming skills they need to emerge as tech-entrepreneurs and leaders. Each year, girls are invited to identify a problem in their communities, and then challenge them to solve them by developing Andriod applications that would address those problems.
