Team Agrinnova has emerged winner of the just concluded fish farming AgriHack West Africa hackaton hosted by Wennovation Hub Ibadan. Five teams were selected to participate in the competition that lasted for five days at the Wennovation hub Ibadan.
The AgriHack West Africa 2016 is a CTA sponsored ICT4Ag intervention staged simultaneously across four West African cities namely Ibadan, Warri, Lome and Cotonou had over 150 participants hosted by Wennovation hub, PIND, Woelab and EtriLabs respectively with the objective of using technology solutions to solve the resilient challenges in the fish farming value chain.
The teams pitched their solutions to the judges comprising Efeturi Money from E Tranzact, Tunde Onilu from Solo Phone and Damola Anjorin.
Team Agrinnova pitched a solution that will help fish farmers sell more of their produce using technology as a major driver. Team Agrinnova identified high cost of production and the difficulty in selling fish produce profitably as some of the many challenges facing the fish farming industry in Nigeria.
The solution is an online platform that will not just connect fish farmers with buyers, but also avail farmers the opportunity to list their fish sales ahead of harvest while the buyers can also view upcoming sales and products they wish to buy. Against the backdrop of limited internet and online inclination faced by farmers, Team Agrinnova added the option to list produce, get trained and also find buyers using SMS shortcodes.
The competition began with a bootcamp on Tuesday, August 2, 2016 with various sessions aimed at educating and developing the capacities of the participants on vital information relevant to the AgriHack competition.
Bisi Adeyemo, a Youth Agropreneur at IITA and Festus Okunlola were on ground to stimulate and equip participants with the essential skill and knowledge required to drive various agribusiness enterprise. This was followed by a breakout session where individual groups came up with a SWOT analysis of the fish farming industry in Nigeria, a question and answer session and the review of Agroinnovation in Nigeria using afrimash.com as a case study.
The immersion program was held on the second day, teams visited major farms along the aquaculture value chain in Ibadan to get onsite technical insight, detail and market information.
The 48 hours hackathon event started on the third day which culminated into the pitch competition on Saturday, August 6, 2016 where team Aginnova emerged the winner.
Team Aqua took second place with ‘Fish Hub’, an android platform that connects buyers and sellers in the aquaculture value chain. They aim to also provide a decent information management system in the entire aquaculture value chain while Team Agrosoft came 3rd with an integrated aquaculture solution and digital destination for fish farming value chain actors using ICT.
The winners in each city will enter into a bootcamp where one winner will finally emerge.