Nigerian Students Win N1.4m In Facebook Hackathon Challenge

250 young, talented students from across the country participated in a hackathon challenge at the CyberXchange conference sponsored by Facebook and over a million naira was awarded to the winning teams.

The students were placed into groups and each group had a presentation, putting forward their solutions to the judges who were Yemi Saka of Ernst and Young, Babafemi Ogungbamila of Interswitch Limited, Regina Wallace-Jones of Facebook, and Bankole Oluwafemi of Techcabal.com

The team that emerged overall winner impressed the judges and audience by coming up with multi-factor authentication for a large enterprise to help secure the accounts of their employees.

The winning team was awarded N700, 000, the second-place team received N400,000 while the third place team received N300,000.

Regina Wallace-Jones, head of security operations at Facebook, and a judge at the hackathon said: “The competitors worked tirelessly to create their solutions, and we were inspired by their dedication and passion for security.

“Encouraging this kind of talent is important to the future of the security industry, and that is why we met with several university professors at CyberXchange to talk about how to continue to strengthen security curriculum and training”, Regina added