Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search
Breaking News:

Nigerian, Turkish Emerged Winners in ITU & Intel Single Board Challenge

By Chike Onwuegbuchi
02 October 2015   |   1:42 am
ITU and Intel have announced the two winners of the final ITU Telecom World 2015 Young Innovators Competition challenge: their Single Board Challenge.
ITU-Telecom-World-2015

ITU Telecom World 2015 in Hungary

ITU and Intel have announced the two winners of the final ITU Telecom World 2015 Young Innovators Competition challenge: their Single Board Challenge.

The winners will take part in ITU Telecom World 2015, the global ICT innovation platform for government, corporates and SMEs to be held 12-15 October in Budapest, Hungary.

The winning entries, selected from 124 applications from 34 countries on the basis of their demonstrated innovation, business potential and clear social value proposition, are:
Ogbonnaya Bassey from Nigeria. His entry, SolarKobo provides solar power systems with zero-upfront financing in Nigeria as a cheaper, more reliable and cleaner electricity source than the private oil generators that are widely used to supplement the insufficient public electricity supply. It will allow small businesses and families to benefit from solar systems for relatively low monthly fees and will use single board devices for remote monitoring and customer payment systems.

Ugur Can Bastik from Turkey. His entry, TactiX is a single board powered smartphone which focuses on connectivity through cellular WiFi and mobile Internet connection. With a tactile display it can display shapes, smileys and 100+ braille characters. With a new kind of braille typing area, one can write rapidly in braille using the phone. There are multi-functional hotkeys on the side areas which can be set up beforehand.

It will include braille interfaces for social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. “Single board technologies are driving transformation in the field of ICTs,” said Houlin Zhao, ITU secretary-general.
“ITU is happy to work with this growing global community of makers and creators to harness these technologies to positively impact lives.” He added that he was delighted to see entrepreneurs making use of ICTs for such a wide range of development goals, from improving accessibility for the disabled, to health care, expanding access and solar power.

We’re extremely honoured to be a part of such a great initiative. We are even more impressed by the fantastic work from the young innovators. As a company, we are always looking to work with the brightest minds to make a positive impact, develop new technologies and make a difference.

Part of this is creating new jobs in ICT and helping these fresh ideas to thrive. The brilliant ideas put forward – whether it’s helping the blind to communicate in a digital world or encouraging more people to use solar power – show great ambition and we’re proud to provide Intel architecture to bring these ideas to life,” said Gordon Graylish, Vice President and General Manager, Governments and World Ahead, Intel Corporation.

Intel will be providing a supply of their single board devices, including microcontrollers, microcomputers and sensor packages to the shortlisted applicants to help them prototype their designs. They will be providing the winners of the challenge with additional seed funding, single board devices and support from the company in helping to develop their designs into the bases of successful companies.

0 Comments