Calabar gets tech incubation centre

The centre located in the Tinapa Knowledge City in Calabar also doled out N45,000 to the winner of Hackathon competition at the launch.Speaking at the event, the Chairman Governing Board of iDEA, Mr. Adedotun Sulaiman said: “our goal is to catalyse the ICT industry by helping Nigerian ICT entrepreneurs create successful businesses; support the interactions […]

The centre located in the Tinapa Knowledge City in Calabar also doled out N45,000 to the winner of Hackathon competition at the launch.
Speaking at the event, the Chairman Governing Board of iDEA, Mr. Adedotun Sulaiman said: “our goal is to catalyse the ICT industry by helping Nigerian ICT entrepreneurs create successful businesses; support the interactions between software entrepreneur and their partners; and act as hubs of innovation that support the development and maturity of a local software economy. We are setting up the first venture capital fund in conjunction with private equity investors to be solely focused on ICT businesses,” Sulaiman added.
The event was kicked off with the Hackathon competition – a 42-hour App building  competition in which the 27 contestants who came from different parts of the country to participate were grouped into a teams of 2 and 3 (a total of 10 teams) to build their choice of software application within 42 hours.
The Hackathon competition was facilitated by the Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria (ISPON).
Team Two emerged as winners and were presented N450, 000 cash prize and 3 Nokia Lumia phones.
The team developed a software App called Le-Media – an App that allows you to combine learning with entertainment.
The Executive Governor of Cross River state, Senator Liyel Mokel reiterated the state’s commitment to the development of ICT by fully supporting the iDEA initiative.
According to him, some of the richest people in the world are the ICT savvies, citing Bill Gates, Steve Job and Mark Zuckerberg as examples.
Acting Director-General of NITDA, Dr. Asiru Daura in his address observed that the centre in Tinapa was a convergence of three visions – the Ministry of Communications Technology, the State Government and NITDA.
He observed that as the implementing agency, NITDA is committed to the success of the centre and has backed up that commitment through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with iDEA.
He said the programme is aimed at helping Nigerian entrepreneurs create successful businesses as well as provides essential support to entrepreneurs to build software skills.