This Ivorian tech genius is first woman to win Africa’s biggest prize for engineering innovation

Girls in STEM (science, innovation, engineering, and mathematics) like Charlette N’Guessan are leading the way for lots of young women to endeavor into the male-dominated sector. She is an innovation entrepreneur whose development just won her the very first reward at this year’s Royal Academy of Engineering Africa prize for engineering development. She is the very first female to win the sought after reward.

According to the academy, N’Guessan’s team invented the Bace API that utilizes facial acknowledgment and artificial intelligence to confirm identities from another location.

N’Guessan is for Ivory Coast however she is residing in Ghana. Her innovation gets brief videos or images taped on phone video cameras to find if the image is the true representation of the individual, as in, of a real individual or just a picture of an existing image.

This invention is indicated to fill the needed gap for institutions that are heavily reliant on identity verification. Currently, 2 banks are using the software application to verify clients’ identities, the academy exposed.

This innovation is very timely due to the fact that, in the age of identity theft, the onus rests on banks to validate the identity of their consumers prior to releasing funds to them.

According to BBC, there were 4 finalists at the virtual ceremony held recently who provided superior discussions, after which the winner was voted for by a live audience.

“Fifteen shortlisted Africa Prize business owners, from six countries in sub-Saharan Africa, received 8 months of training and mentoring, during which they established their service strategies and learned to market their innovations,” the academy said in a declaration.

The 26-year-old winner received $33,000, an equivalent of ₤ 25,000 and the runners-up got $13,000 (₤ 10,000) each.

There were two Ugandan runners-up– David Tusubira from and William Wasswa. Tsusubira’s development is a system that handles off-grid power grids by keeping an eye on the condition of the solar arrays. Wasswa also developed a low-cost digital microscopic lense that accelerates screening for cervical cancer.

The last runner up was Aisha Raheem from Nigeria and her invention offers a digital platform for farmers. It uses data collected from their farms to improve their effectiveness.

Africa is filled with a lot skill and the next generation of creators like N’Guessan are opening doors that previously never ever existed so the world can have a peek of the amazing technologies being developed in Africa. They are showing to the world that Africa, like other continents, has developers whose stories have not yet reached the international phase.

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