At the Fourth Edition of the Zenith Tech Fair, which took place on Thursday, November 21, 2024, at the Eko Convention Centre, Eko Hotels & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos, with the theme “Future Forward 4.0: Embedded Finance, Cybersecurity & Growth Imperatives—The Impact of AI.”
Ten finalists were chosen from the more than 1,700 participants in the hackathon, a fiercely competitive hackathon session ending with a total of N77.5 million in prize money.
The winner, JumpnPass, a self-checkout technological solution that is revolutionizing the retail industry in Africa, was declared the overall winner and received the N25 million grand prize. This includes a six-week incubation and mentoring program intended to help them develop their startup, running from December 2024 to February 2025.
CreditChek, the first runner-up, won N20 million and a mentorship program. They are a credit and verification service provider using AI and open banking to streamline income and credit history verification for financial institutions.
Salad Africa, the second runner-up, won N15 million and a mentorship program. They are a start-up that provides seamless integration of credit products for digital platforms and software companies.
The other seven finalists, namely Regxta, CashAfrica, Middleman, Messenger, Pocketfood, Famasi Africa, and Kitovu, all received N2.5 million each.
Adaora Umeoji, GMD/CEO of Zenith Bank Plc, commented on the hackathon, saying, “This prestigious annual event was created to empower and nurture young fertile minds. We hope to produce the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk from the Zenith Bank Hackathons in the nearest future. According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, 70% of Nigeria’s population are youths, which is an economic asset when properly harnessed. This is part of the reason why Zenith Bank is hosting this event to support the development of technology startups. Their success not only fosters innovation and growth in Nigeria, but it also plays a vital role in creating employment opportunities for our youth.”
“It is paramount that we adapt and adopt technology to stay ahead of the curve. We have seen various cases of companies that failed because of their lack of innovation. It is quite obvious that when companies fail to innovate, they can easily be displaced, so this is not the time to be orthodox; innovation should be a top priority for us.”
Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the executive Governor of Lagos State, had this to say, “What we need to do is to be able to enhance our product and services in order to compete in the world. We can’t continue to act local, we need to think global. Anything that we’re doing now, we need to be able to know that we are not just serving a local market, we actually want to serve the global market, and that’s why I’m glad that consistently, for the past four years, I have kept up with the Zenith Tech Fair. I am sure 5.0 should be bigger and better than what we have today, but for us as a government, what we need to do is to continue to use platforms like this to reassure you of our readiness to provide an enabling environment for your ideas and innovative solutions.”
The Zenith Bank startup pitch competition and incubation program aims to accelerate Nigerian businesses’ growth in sectors like embedded finance, cybersecurity, fintech, healthtech, agriculture, and e-commerce.
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