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The U.S. Department of State and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) are pleased to announce the selection of 102 exceptional young science and technology entrepreneurs to advance to the 2016 Technology Idea (Tech-I) Global Pitch Competition semifinals. Tech-I is an initiative of the Global Innovation through Science and Technology (GIST) program, an annual global contest with the aim of identifying, selecting, training and young scientists in a bid to spur them on to create businesses. Voting is currently ongoing from the 1st of April until the 1st of May help determine the thirty finalists to pitch at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES 2016) in Silicon Valley, CA from the 23rd to 24th of June. This year five outstanding teams from Nigeria are in the GIST Tech-I semifinals. Their ideas and startups address a variety of critical science and technology sectors, including agriculture, aerospace and engineering, education, health, environment, energy, and information and communications technology. These teams, represented by their founders are listed below: NerveFlo Founder: Silas Okwoche Sector: ICT Summary: Nerve Mobile developed the frontier unified digital content distribution platform for Africa called NERVEFLO. NerveFlo is similar to iTunes or Amazon Digital, however, NerveFlo is a robust platform that allows African creators sell their e-books/music/movies/short-films etc directly to mobile & web consumers. NerveFlo’s platform and B2B2C marketplace was built to work brilliantly for emerging markets because it addresses the key bandwidth limitations and digital piracy limitations (via our patent pending FloPlay digital content protection algorithm) in these markets. NerveFlo focuses on on academic, religious & literary content from Africa. www.nerveflo.com AfriBotix Founder: Daniel Isa Sector: Agriculture Summary: Providing African Farmers (and farmers around the world) with cutting edge and low cost crop/livestock surveillance and monitoring technology Genesys Cooker Founder: Maxwell Chinnah Sector: Health Care Summary: We build efficient clean cookstoves that reduce smoke-pollution by 90%, and produce electricity from heat energy. Recyclable waste to energy Founder: Destiny Frederick Sector: Other Summary: EcoFuture is a social enterprise that helps waste recycling manufacturers tackles the challenges of accessing highly sorted quality recyclable waste at minimum cost. We increase our customer factory capacity by 40% and decrease their cost of production by at least 30%. ResSpot Founder: Nnenna Chioma Okoye Sector: ICT Summary: Africa’s first 911 platform, ResSpot is an emergency response mobile app and wearable device that gives people access to public safety information and affordable personal security. Referred to as an Uber for personal security & public safety, ResSpot employs GPS technology, a team of private security partners, and crowdsourcing to send immediate emergency assistance. Users can also send and receive real-time emergency alerts and notify loved ones globally on the platform. To date, ResSpot has conducted over 100 customer interviews, have begun UI and UX design, prototyped wearable device, and identified 3 security partners for beta launch. Kindly support these teams with your votes to get Nigeria onto the global stage: In order to vote please follow these simple steps:

Log in or register at GIST website: http://www.gistnetwork.org/user/register
Click on this link to find all the Nigerian startups http://goo.gl/kFHORq
Click the “Select All” button, then click the “Batch Vote” button to vote for all the Nigerian teams.