Obafemi Awolowo University students are gearing up to make it to the finals of the Hult Prize – one of the top 5 ideas in the world featured in Times Magazine and dubbed the Nobel Prize for Students.
With over 100,000 undergraduates and postgraduates from 150+ countries involved, the Hult Prize in partnership with the United Nations, the Clinton Global Initiative and the Hult International Business school is the world’s largest startup accelerator for the launch of for-good and for-profit business ideas emerging from universities around the world through pitching of business ideas. Starting with each campuses hosting their respective Oncampus events.
The winner of the intra-campus event will automatically advance to compete in one of the 25 regional finals happening around the world. The goal is to reach the accelerator in New York where there is funding and mentorship throughout. Thereafter, 6 teams will finally be selected to pitch at the United Nations where the winning team gets $1 million dollars in seed funding capital.
The theme for the competition announced by Ex-President Bill Clinton on September 15, 2018 is “Youth Unemployment- Develop an idea to provide meaning jobs for 10,000 young people by 2025”. The competition is opened to BSc, MSc and PhD students. Students from OAU are expected to form teams of 3-4 students each and to come up with their business ideas to pitch to top judges on the event day.
Johnson Ishola, the Campus Director who will be leading the Hult Prize at Obafemi Awolowo University On campus programme, was quoted in the statement as saying that he is “confident Obafemi Awolowo University can produce the next generation of business leaders who will drive the country’s economy.”
He encouraged individuals to be part of the On Campus event as the aim of the Hult Prize isn’t only to get the best business ideas from students but also to instill an entrepreneurial/start-up culture across students, inspiring them to believe that by setting up businesses, they can solve some of Nigeria’s and world’s most pressing challenges.
He also stressed that the University can represent Nigeria at the Global and National stage, coming out victorious.
“The future of our economy depends on a new wave of entrepreneurs coming up with ideas, resolving to make them a reality and having a mission to create wealth and jobs. The theme for the competition is arguably the most pressing challenge we have in Nigeria and if we can solve this, a lot more other problems will be solved too” Johnson told.
Speaking on achievements made in the previous year, Johnson said, “In 2017/2018, our On campus winning team – Team Utility – developed a system that traps off solar radiation to purify and generate electricity simultaneously. They got an automatic entry to one of the regional finals. ”
This academic year 2018/19, the Hult Prize at OAU event is looking for the top 3 ideas or teams to award from the intra-campus event whilst the brightest team will automatically advance to compete in one of the 25 regionals happening around the world.
With over 10 rock star judges on the panel, 3 milestone breaking speakers on the pre-event workshops/sessions, volunteers and strategic partners, we will be leading a new wave of entrepreneurs to change the world.
Johnson finally ended saying that “the coming of the Hult Prize to Nigeria is really timely and that the government, school authorities and Business or Innovation hubs such as Co-creation hub, Civic Innovation Lab, Techpointafrica, African Youth Entrepreneurs, should support the event in every way they can so that students will be able to come up with better prototypes when up against students from other countries and to have better solutions implemented in Nigeria.
To learn more, please visit www.hultprize.org or contact the Organizing Committee at hultprizeoau@gmail.com.
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