Team Hi-Tech, under the direction of Afolabi Ayanfe and Sophia Ezeh, emerged victorious in the first FCMB Hackathon Challenge, taking home the N3 million grand prize for developing the digital financial solution Padi4Life.
Through a collaboration with Ingressive For Good (I4G), the hackathon introduced a fresh group of tech enthusiasts and promoted creativity and inventive problem-solving.
After 60 teams competed in a 72-hour hackathon with over 2,900 entries, Team Hi-Tech’s Padi4Life made the final shortlist. Peer-to-peer lending, asset tokenization, and blockchain-driven investing and engagement features made it stand out.
For their KoloPadi solution, Rita Onwudiwe and Augustus Shaminga of Team KoloPadi won the N1 million first runner-up prize. Victor Tochukwu of Team Xperia won the second runner-up reward of N500,000 for their Money Minder solution.
A total of N4.5 million in prizes were awarded. There were five members on each competing team, though several dropped out.
Nevertheless, strong individuals like Victor of Team Xperia persisted and, working as a one-person team, made the final shortlist.
Declaring, “Padi4Life is designed to build a community of trusted financial partners, meeting
the needs of Nigerians,” the Team Lead of Hi-Tech thanked FCMB.
Rolayo Akhigbe, Divisional Head of Transaction Banking at FCMB, emphasized the bank’s dedication to open banking innovation. She exhorted developers, start-ups, and fintechs to use FCMB’s application programming interface (API) to create sustainable and inclusive solutions.
