HULT PRIZE: LAUTECH to compete for $1M in London as team emerges national winner

LADOKE Akintola University of Technology, LAUTECH, Ogbomoso, through its TEAM ‘Tech Farm Institute’ has won the national level of the Hult Prize competition held in Abuja, and set to engage in further contest for a grand prize of $1 million at the finals in London.

The Head, Public Relations and Alumni Relations unit of the University, Mr Lekan Fadeyi, who confirmed the development, informed that members of Team Farm Institute will be joining other national winners from top Universities around the world for an eight-week training that will transform their ideas into startups for a chance to win $1 million.

Team Tech Farm Institute, had Samson Ogunfuwa (400L Urban and Regional Planning), Similoluwa Akande (400L Crop Production and Soil Science), and Barnabas Adejinmi (200L Management & Accounting) as its members.

The Hult Prize, as learnt, was established in 2010 by Bertil Hult, and is an annual, year-long competition that crowd-sources ideas from MBA and college students after challenging them to solve a pressing social issue around topics such as food security, water access, energy, and education.

Similoluwa, who expressed her happiness following the feat recorded by the team said: “We received God’s favour, and we also had help from a lot of people who we ran our project by and they helped us look at things even better than we were doing.

“We weren’t just focused on Hult Prize we were determined to take the business to the next level with or without Hult Prize; so, we gave ourselves totally to the project and we also opened our work to criticism which helped us see things through the eyes of others and make improvements,” she stressed.

Also, two other teams from LAUTECH – ‘Team Green School’ and ‘Team Skymax’ participated at the national round alongside ‘Team Tech Farm Institute’.