In an effort to equip students with the necessary skills to enter the job market, Cavista, global partner for Axxess and a leading provider of custom software solutions in the healthcare industry, collaborated with Babcock University to host a campus hackathon, which is part of its ongoing campus hackathon tour.
Present at the event were Bamidele Odufuye, Vice President and Country Director for Cavista Nigeria; Bisi Olotu, Senior Delivery Manager, Cavista Nigeria; Barr. Olaniyi Arije, Company Secretary, Cavista Nigeria; Professor Ademola Tayo, Vice Chancellor (VC), Babcock University; Professor Sunday Idowu, Dean, School of Computing and Engineering Sciences; and Professor Adewale Adebayo, Head of Department, Information Technology, among others.
The event saw the participation of seven teams, who came up with innovative solutions for various problems.
The teams were ABCD, Bizon, Candela Tech, DevNinjas, Slippay, Spontaneous and Javascript Developers. Their respective solutions were a counterfeit drug detector, a web3-based e-commerce platform, a hypertension risk monitoring app, an online medical booking platform, a waste management solution, and a blood donor solution.
The judges engaged the teams, asked them important questions and gave valuable feedback.
Team DevNinjas won the grand prize of ₦1,000,000, followed by Team Javascript Developers and Team Spontaneous, who won ₦500,000 and ₦300,000, respectively.
Professor Tayo, VC, Babcock University, commended everyone that participated in the hackathon and encouraged everyone in attendance to take advantage of every opportunity they find by availing themselves for training programs, taking certifications and being marketable.
He added that the institution has a wide local and international network that the students can leverage.
Speaking to Techpoint Africa, Odufuye said the inspiration behind the hackathon is the need to nurture talent.
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According to him, "Talent exists everywhere. In nation-building, you have to build on top of talent. You don't wait for talents to get out of the university or expect them to come ready-made to the market. We find out that most of them are not fit for the market when they are ready to come to the market. Getting them while they are still in higher institutions is really important to producing quality talent for the market. The hackathon is a way to challenge them and reward them."
He said the hackathon is not limited to Babcock University, adding that this is one of many. We have a university program that we do globally. Odufuye said they are currently in talks with Covenant University.
"We are going to do this in multiple universities in Nigeria, and we are still going to do this outside the university to engage everyone in tech in Nigeria. We also see this as an opportunity to get talents and encourage them to know about Cavista and what Axxess is doing globally."
For the winners and participants of the hackathon, Odufuye said that they intend to bring them into their associate engineer program if they fulfil all other recruitment criteria. Adding, "we have programs that help them to perfect their ideas, and we have the post-hackathon phase where we are able to help them to shape their ideas and make them market ready if we see a potential upon further research."
