Nigeria’s leading digital bank, ALAT by Wema, has announced the call-for-entries for the second leg of the 2022 edition of its highly anticipated Hackathon programme tagged #Hackaholics 3.0 – Building the Future. Entry submissions for the second leg are ongoing and the application portal will be closed on Friday, April 1, 2022. The pitch event will hold at the AmphiTheatre, Babcock University, Remo, Ogun State
Babcock University is expected to host over 500 students and guests for this phase of the competition. The Hackaholics programme is targeted at young Nigerians who will devote their coding, product curation, and pitching skills towards providing solutions to rising issues across multiple sectors. The solutions are to focus broadly on the limitless possibilities in the future of technology, like NFTs, Web 3.0, Metaverse, Blockchain, AR, VR, AI, IoT.
Applications for the first leg of the tech competition began on Saturday, February 5, 2022. This was followed closely by a pitch session on Tuesday, February 15 at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA) where 10 bright young minds battled it out for a chance at the ultimate prize.
According to ALAT, the programme aims to discover and nurture seed-stage startups to become the next Unicorn out of Africa and serve as a pipeline for grooming hirable tech talents in key areas – Solutions Engineering, Data Science, Product Management, Product Design, etc.
Speaking on the initiative, the Head of Innovation, Wema Bank, Solomon Ayodele, said: “the tech space is filled with innovative solutions that can solve critical challenges across target sectors that will create great value within the society. We want to encourage early-stage solution providers and be an integral part of the change. We are humbled to discover and support the next generation of tech giants who will use their creativity and talent to birth the future we all desire.
We truly believe our aspirations as an organization align with the ambitious desires of these young minds.”
The next round of live pitches will begin on Tuesday, April 5, 2022, and end on Thursday, April 7, 2022, at Babcock University. Selected candidates will pitch their ground-breaking ideas to a panel of judges who will select the top contenders who will vie for ₦5 million in cash prizes at the grand finale in Lagos.
Interested applicants can apply here or on the Wema Bank website.