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Under the mentorship of the tutors at Edufun Teknik STEM Centre, five Junior Secondary School girls, hailing from Anambra State, have gone on to win the Technovation World Pitch in California.

The girls during and after receiving their awards. punch.ng

Gold

On 9th August 2018, the five girls from Regina Pacies Secondary School, Onitsha, represented Nigeria and Africa at the World Technovation Challenge in the Silicon Valley in San Francisco, USA, winning a gold medal in the competition.

The team:

Promise Nnalue Jessica Osita Nwabuaku Ossai Adaeze Onuigbo Vivian Okoye The girls defeated representatives of twelve other technological giants, including the USA, China, Spain, Turkey and Uzbekistan.

The FD-Detector

The secondary school team developed a mobile application called the FD-Detector which helps tackle the challenge of fake pharmaceutical products in Nigeria. Under the tutelage of Uchenna Onwuamaegbu-Ugwu, the CEO of Edufun Technik STEM, the team spent five months researching and developing the FD-Detector, which bested over 2000 competing applications to get to the finals in California. Onwuamaegbu-Ugwu is a Mandela Washington Fellow (2017) and Founder of Queen Afrique Initiative.

“Edufun Teknik as a social enterprise that addressed the challenges of inaccessibility and unavailability of Science Technology Engineering & Mathematics (STEM) education through a design-driven customized STEM curriculum.” — Onwuamaegbu-Ugwu

Edufun Teknik aims to increase the number of girls between ages 3-18 years who have full access to STEM education in order to develop skills needed for the “Big Future”.

Technovation World Pitch

Technovation offers girls around the world the opportunity to learn programming, becoming tech-entrepreneurs and leaders. Of the 115 countries which participated, only 12 were handpicked to pitch at Silicon Valley.

Applause

This massive win was applauded by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who tweeted:

These young ladies in Junior Secondary School, developed a mobile application called ‘FD Detector’ to tackle the problems of fake pharmaceutical products in Nigeria.
Yesterday, they won the 2018 Technovation World Pitch in California. Congratulations! We are very proud of you. pic.twitter.com/SFFVvP88JB — Prof Yemi Osinbajo (@ProfOsinbajo) August 10, 2018

Well done to Uchenna Onwuamaegbu-Ugwu, the founder of Edufun Technik STEM Center.
I understand that she and her company were responsible for mentoring the young ladies. Great job! — Prof Yemi Osinbajo (@ProfOsinbajo) August 10, 2018

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This article was first published on 10th August 2018

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Also known as 'Glofame', Henry is a prolific Writer, fine lyricist and an audacious independent Spoken Word poet who loves God, appreciates music and enjoys other forms of performance art.