These Nigerian Students Won 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.