Progress with the Onitsha 5 coding champions

A presidential reception September 6 tipped the scale in the accolades Nigeria has showered on the brilliant young girls who won the World Technovation Challenge in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, the USA on August 8. Congratulations to Promise Nnalue, Jessica Osita, Nwabuaku Ossai, Adaeze Onuigbo and Vivian Okoye. These students of Regina Pacis Secondary School, Onitsha, Anambra State carried aloft the flag of Nigeria in technological innovation in a field of 12 countries. Kudos also to their mentor Uchenna Onwuamegbu.

The youngsters competed under the name Team-Save-A-Soul. They defeated competition from teams such as the United States of America, China, Spain, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. Among the 12 finalists were teams from countries with a higher standing in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) than Nigeria, hence the ululation across the land.

Their app is the FD-Detector. It was on point as it tackles the problem of fake drugs in the Nigerian environment. FD-Detector identifies counterfeit and expired medicines using barcodes. FD-Detector also educates users on six characteristics of drugs. Team member Jessica Osita bore personal grief from the loss of a brother to fake drugs. It showed in her commitment. They spent five months researching and building their app, drawing on guidelines from Technovation. They used open source software from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Vice President Osinbajo spoke of the plans of the Federal Government to grow the technology culture in Nigeria. He said the government is looking at including technology education in the curriculum starting from pre-school and primary. The effort would be in recognition of the growing importance of technology. Osinbajo added that Nigeria would rejig STEM to include Arts and bring on STEAM. The inclusion of Arts is an overt recognition of the contribution of the humanities to technology as witnessed in the beautiful typefaces Steve Jobs incorporated into Apple Mackintosh from his classes in graphics. The Vice President said the Federal Government had developed an “indicative curriculum” for STEAM that it would soon release.

Before the presidential honours, the home state of Regina Pacis Secondary School had done the needful. Kudos to Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State for being an executive cheerleader for the victorious girls before and after. Obiano bought into the vision of the team leader and supported the Onitsha 5 Coding Girls. He boosted their participation with a reception and financial support and then welcomed them with monetary rewards, scholarships and assurance of support.

Technovation describes as the world’s largest technology entrepreneurship programme for girls ages 10-18. Nineteen thousand girls participated in 2018. It runs across 100+ countries, supported by UNESCO, Peace Corps and UN Women. Through Technovation girls work with women mentors, find a problem in their community, develop a mobile app, and launch a start-up.

Technovation has Junior and Senior categories. The Onitsha 5 won in the Junior Category. Entries will open in December 2018 for the 2019 competition for Juniors and Seniors. A key difference is that participants in the Senior Category write and showcase a Business Plan for the venture they would run with their app.

Post the applause and receptions, what happens with the FD-Detector and the Onitsha 5 Coding Girls? We ask because it is not the first time Nigeria would celebrate scientific or technological innovations, by an individual or a group. After the celebration and speechifying by Government, the inventor goes home to silence. Nigeria forgets. Until another one happens.

We cite one quick example because of its contextual relevance to these times of bad roads. Ebenezer Meshida of the University of Lagos won the Nigerian Prize for Science in 2008 for his work, “Solution to Road Pavement Destabilisation by the Invention of Lateralite”. The work of the professor of engineering geology provides a material tested and proven to help solve the problems of road deterioration due to improper or inadequate soil tests and application of materials. The NLNG Science Prize, among others, contains a repository of ideas, innovations and breakthroughs.

Nothing has happened to them. Zilch. Nigeria has not developed any of the ideas produced by its researchers into products and services in common usage.

Progress with the Onitsha 5 Coding Girls would thus come only from the development of their App into one that citizens can buy or download freely and use on their phones and other platforms. It is fitting that the Director General of the Nigerian Technology Development Agency was one of those who received the Onitsha 5 Coding Girls alongside the Vice President.

There are two known components of technology in use. They are research and development. While there is plenty of research in Nigeria, we often fail to move to the next step of “development”.

We call on Vice President Osinbajo to actualise the promise of working with the Anambra State Government to ensure progress with the Onitsha 5 Coding Girls by beginning a process to enable commercialisation of the FD-Detector App. Nigeria must do what others are doing to move from a laboratory app to one of general application and use by the populace.