The Executive Director of FSI, Aituaz Kola-Oladejo, disclosed this at a press briefing in Lagos during the week. According to the brand navigator of FSI, a non-profit organisation committed to enabling startups within the technology and financial space, the ambassadors will be rewarded for their community efforts on their campuses. 

She added: “Also, we are holding the FSI innovation challenge within the student community across the six geopolitical zones, where winners will go home with lots of giveaway prizes.” 

Reeling out the achievements of FSI in the last four years, Aituaz stated that the company has registered its impact and presence in five continents. “Our impact is being felt in five continents, and our community strength is over 8,200 members, including 45 foreign members from Africa, Asia, Europe, Central and North America,” she declared. 

Financial Services Innovators has gained recognition and acceptance as a brand in the highly competitive fintech ecosystem. One of such recognitions is the company’s partnership with the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), FintechNGR and Mentorship Without Borders (WMB), a European firm providing free mentorship programmes in software development, data science and product management.

Aside empowering members on its platform with knowledge and technical support, FSI members have also graced international stages and won competitions. At the same time, three of their startups have equally been opportune to raise funds. “We have also provided technical support to over 2,500 individuals through our mentorship programmes, startup clinics and capacity building,” Aituaz reiterated. 

Since its launch in October 2021, the FSI Talent Hunt initiative has been enormously successful. Over 1,000 campus ambassadors have emerged from the competitions. And only recently, the Financial Services Innovators unveiled three virtual innovation labs in tertiary institutions to groom tech talents. The company has nurtured 55 start-ups on its business incubation platform, and ten have already launched their products. Within a short time, FSI has proven that an innovation sandbox with a vibrant community is a cost-effective product innovation and development approach. 

“We’ve indeed come a long way. Since commencing operations in 2020, over 140 MVPs have been developed in the FSI sandbox, 17 apps have been published in the Appstore, 8,000 people have accessed 375 API endpoints on the FSI sandbox, while over 487 teams have participated in the FSI hackathons,” the Executive Director said.

Financial Services Innovators (FSI), a non-profit organisation committed to discovering tech talents in tertiary institutions and enabling start-ups within the technology and financial services space, organised the hackathon challenge in partnership with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), NIBSS, GDG Lagos, Flourish, AXA Mansard, and Yellow Cowries.

Team ATBU defeated eight other contestants to emerge winner and smiled to the bank with a whopping N1 million, while the 1st runner-up, Team Sauki Health went away with N750,000, and the 2nd runner-up, Team BetaLife pocketing N500, 000.

Team ATBU won with Tickety, an innovative trip-booking platform for people with or without the Internet. 

Team Sauki pitched an online/offline app aimed at providing health services for Nigerians, while Team BetaLife presented a Blood Bank app that addresses the challenges of blood donation in the country. Other winners of the competition included Locapay, Digi Clinic, Trowpass, Rocket, Safepay, and Dono. They all went home with consolation prizes of N100,000 each.

According to the Executive Director, FSI, Aituaz Kola-Oladejo, the hackathon challenge is borne out of her desire to groom young talents in technology. 

“We believe that once we start grooming young talents in technology, we’ll be able to create employment opportunities. We also want to change the narrative. We have seen youngsters coming out of Nigeria doing great stuff like Flutterwave, Paystack etc., but there is still a lot to do. What the young innovators need is support. So, we are providing them with the ladder to grow and achieve their goals and dreams. That’s exactly what we are doing with this Financial Inclusion for All Hackathon challenge,” she submitted.

Welcoming the participants to Chrisland University, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. (Mrs) Chinedum Peace Babalola, who was represented by Prof. Temidayo Akinbola, not only wished them a successful deliberation but also implored the visitors to explore the many tourist attractions in the ancient city.

NACOS president, Olamilekan Abolade, in his opening remarks emphasized the uniqueness of this year’s conference, saying it was put together to discover the power of revitalizing the economy through technology.

“One of the highlights of the event is the innovation challenge in which we have partnered with Financial Services Innovators (FSI) to make it yet another best in the history of the association,” he stated.

Prof. Adesina Sodiya, President of Nigeria Computer Society, thanked FSI for organising the event and lending its support to NACOS. On his part, keynote speaker, Prof. Olumide Longe, Dean & Head of School, Faculty of Computational Sciences & Informatics, Academic City University, Accra, Ghana, challenged the young scholars to come up with computing innovations that will have a positive impact on Nigeria and across the world. 

“Crisis is a breeding ground for innovation. Therefore, what you need to fire your innovation is illumination,” he posited.

Derek Nwafor moderated the hackathon while Eniola Boluogun, Gbolahan Alli, Binta Moustapha, and FSI’s Advisory Board member, Wole Odetayo, served as judges. According to Odetayo, the winners and participants should continue to innovate and not rest on their oars.

Speaking shortly after his team emerged as the overall winner, ATBU’s leader, Divine Owoyemi, expressed gratitude to FSI for providing the platform to showcase their talents. 

“We are all Computer Science students of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU), Bauchi. We travelled from Kaduna to participate in the hackathon competition. We won because we came up with something that nobody has done before. We are excited to win, and we thank FSI for giving us the platform to showcase our talents,” he said.

About 74 teams from 28 states spread over the six geo-political zones of Nigeria registered for the hackathon competition. However, 12 teams were shortlisted to pitch their innovative ideas to a panel of judges at the grand finale. The teams developed technological applications to solve real-life problems in suburban communities.

Themed: ‘Financial Inclusion for All’ the Hackathon is in partnership with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Flourish Ventures, AXA Mansard, as well as NIBSS and will be held during the NACOS annual conference taking place in Abeokuta, Ogun State from August 16-18, 2022.

As part of pre-event activities, a webinar was held on Wednesday, July 20, 2022, and attended by students of 30 tertiary institutions from the six geo-political zones of the country. 

However, while the Hackathon will begin on August 16, with several teams building their solutions, the pitching of Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) will take place on August 18, 2022. Already, over 60 teams have registered for this challenge.

In her opening remarks at the webinar, Mrs Aituaz Kola-Oladejo, Executive Director, Financial Services Innovators (FSI), traced the history of financial inclusion hackathons in Nigeria. According to her, it began in October 2021 as a means of discovering Tech talents in tertiary institutions, and to change the current narrative in the nation’s digital ecosystem.

“The objectives of this hackathon is to change the lifestyle of Nigerians from cash to cashless transactions, and to encourage seamless conduct of business via digital platforms,” she said.

Delivering a paper at the webinar, Mrs Njideka Nwabukwu, Head, Strategy Coordination Office, Financial Inclusion Delivery Unit, Central Bank of Nigeria, disclosed that the targets of the National Financial Inclusion Strategy have not been met due to the hiccups afflicting stakeholders in the industry.

Nwabukwu, who represented Dr Paul Oluikpe, Head, Financial Inclusion Delivery Unit, CBN, identified the impediments on the path of NFIS to include inadequate infrastructure by banks in rural areas, poor mobile telephone network penetration in some parts of the country, and high operational cost by service providers.

According to her, other factors hindering the resolution of this problem in Nigeria are lack of innovation by operators, limited competition, and unsuitable business implementation.

Proffering solutions to the challenges, Nwabukwu said the CBN would keep churning out forward-thinking regulations that will guide Financial Services Providers and innovators in the financial inclusion space.

“The financial inclusion targets can only be attained with effective collaboration of stakeholders,” she concluded.

In his paper, IT expert and CEO, Electronic Settlement Group, Olaolu Awojoodu, rendered an overview on Financial Inclusion Challenges in Nigeria. He said lack of access to affordable technology, religious and cultural beliefs, as well as barriers created by lack of trust from consumers, were some of the factors hampering financial inclusion in the country.

Awojoodu stated further, “Although, the Financial Inclusion Strategy is targeted majorly at the banked and unbanked in the society, with all the banks in Nigeria having less than 6,000 branches, it is not surprising that the target of the NFIS has been slow.”

NACOS president, Comrade Olamilekan Toheeb rounded off the webinar with a vote of thanks. He commended the facilitators and urged the participating teams to work hard for success in the hackathon.