Designing solutions that work in ondo state

DELIVERING LIFE CHANGING SOLUTIONS THAT HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO IMPROVE the LIVES OF many IN ONDO STATE.

Sector:
ICT & Mobile for Development

The Challenge

HOW DO YOU GET 300 GRADUATES TO DEVELOP SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS THAT RESPOND TO THE NEEDS OF PEOPLE IN ONDO STATE IN THE AREAS OF AGRICULTURE, RENEWABLE ENERGY AND EDUCATION?

The government of Ondo State identified the need for state-led solutions that promote entrepreneurship and facilitate job creation. To this effect, the Emerge Ondo Hackathon was a bid to work with young graduates and help them develop solutions that overcome challenges in the areas of agriculture, renewable energy, business linkages and education.

Working with with the Emerging Communities Africa Team, we provide capacity development and design thinking coaching to the participants. We found this approach necessary as it will guide the hacker towards developing solutions that cater to unmet needs of the people most affected by the problems they are trying to solve.

Co-creation with the end users is central to our approach as solutions developed in isolation suffer from lack of take-up and genuine effectiveness.

THE OUTCOME

Following our ongoing support during the hackathon, the teams applied human-centred design approaches to develop four scalable solutions specific to the needs of people in Ondo state.

Team Gadges were interested in providing access to affordable solar solutions.

Team Psyche designed a device to monitor students’ psychological state as it directly correlates to academic performance.

Team FarmCred were interested in developing an application that improves access to agri-finance by creating credit profiles for smallholder farmers.

Team Dunalinks sought to link small scale technicians with contractors for better jobs and growth opportunities