VoguePay partners NACOSS to grow local software content

VoguePay, an online payment processor, has partnered with the National Association of Computer Science Students (NACOSS), to invest in young talents in Nigerian universities to grow local content and the software industry.

The company, which described the initiative as its corporate social responsibility (CRS), said for Nigeria’s software industry to be competitive and meet global demand, there is an urgent need to invest in new generation of software developers and businesses.

In 2017, VoguePay entered into strategic sponsorship with NACOSS, an umbrella body of more than 300,000 students studying Computer Science in various higher institutions, with a mission to discover, launch and support student software entrepreneurs. As part of the yealy conference, VoguePay rewards students and developers, who are building e-commerce and other software technology that can impact and improve various sectors of Nigeria’s economy with cash awards and other consolation prizes.

VoguePay’s Chief Executive Officer, Micheal Simeon, commenting on why it sponsored NACOSS, said: “it is time to give back to the community to encourage new generation of software entrepreneurs”. He added that recognising talents will encourage the software industry in Nigeria to grow.

This year’s NACOSS conference held at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology recently had a hackathon session sponsored by VoguePay, where three projects were awarded cash prizes for their innovation.

They included a chatbot e-learning application that helps students to improve learning experience, an all-in-one voting platform for students’ elections, and an IoT application that improves communication to deaf and dumb individuals.

They all won cash prizes and business support from VoguePay.com and eStoreSMS.com while others were awarded consolation prizes for their presentations.

The VoguePay/NACOSS competition is part of a strategic five-year partnership that VoguePay is pursuing to help raise awareness about local talents in software development among students of tertiary institutions. The three winning ideas receive cash prizes of N100, 000, N75, 000 and N50, 000 respectively.

On behalf of other contestants, the overall winner of the hackathon, Femi Ayodeji of the University of Ibadan thanked VoguePay for the cash prize of one hundred thousand naira (N100, 000) he won and assured that he would keep making progress on his ideas. In the same vein, the national president of NACOSS, Comrade Abolade Akintomiwa was full of gratitude to VoguePay and eStoreSMS for the sponsorship.