PARTICIPATE

We welcome ideas from individuals and groups that may be interested in developing applications, technologies, tools, services or any other kind of innovation using the data that can be accessed by visiting this url

To Apply, please click the button below:

WORKSHOP

Select individuals will be invited to attend one workshop to be held in Lagos. Participants at the workshop will analyse and review the USPF data in detail and arrive at a set of findings about the applicability of the data to innovation.

It is expected that the workshop will identify the following:

- Specific ideas and applications that can be tested and
implemented at the hackathon
- Themes & domains of innovation - e.g. Big data applications, Mobile Apps
- Economic sectors, groups and actors that could benefit from innovating
on the USPF data – e.g. Farmers, or Telcos, or Health
- - Additional data needs
- - General conclusions of a technical or specialised nature that are
  deemed to be useful for guiding innovators

DATA ACCESS

In 2013, the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) carried out a study with the objective of identifying clusters of voice telephony and transport network gap in the country. The result of the study is being used to assist the USPF in designing projects and strategies to cover these gaps and ensure that everyone irrespective of locality is connected in Nigeria.

Existing service coverage areas have been identified using data supplied by mobile operators (with geographical coordinates, addresses etc) and areas considered underserved or unserved have been grouped and mapped into contiguous clusters on a state-by-state basis. There are 207 clusters with an estimated population of about 36.8 million people.

Additional data sets could be overlaid on the USPF Access Gap data. These could include location of public facilities (hospitals, schools, police stations, tertiary institutions etc), predominant occupations, land used for agriculture road and power infrastructure, etc.

Data Download

THE HACKATHON

This is an opportunity for developers, designers and anyone who might be interested to come together, slice and dice existing and new data and build solutions that promote ICT access in underserved areas. Teams formed for the hackathon will build fully working prototypes of their solutions based on the agreed technical specifications. The solutions will be presented to a panel of judges, the press and the public. The winning solutions will be selected to receive seed prizes towards completion for launch.

The three solutions will then move into an incubation programme where a minimum viable product will be built, piloted, and tested.

Prizes

The three most outstanding startups will be rewarded with a cash prize of N1m, N0.75m and N0.5m for winner, first runner-up and second runner-up respectively.
The prizes will enable the startups to continue developing their prototypes towards full launch. The prizes will be disbursed by the incubation organisation on behalf of USPF.

INCUBATION

Within the Incubation Program at iDEA Nigeria, ventures will receive mentoring, business development, administrative and funding support to test their models and focus on execution. The completed minimum viable product will be launched and used by target users. The overall business model will also be tested to see what works. Metrics from tests will be used to inform improvements.