Three Unilag students: David Popoola, Eyitayo Ogunbiyi and Chukwudumebi Onwuli, have won the Hackathon4Justice competition organised by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Organised in partnership with Facebook and AfricaTeenGeeks, the competition is geared towards sparking creativity in young people. This it does by challenging them to employ their coding skills to solve problems pertaining to the rule of law in the areas of corruption, integrity, and ethics; crime prevention and criminal justice; organized crime; human trafficking and terrorism and violent extremism.
This year’s event lasted two days. And after about 29 hours of coding, the trio from Unilag edged 47 other students from 9 institutions to clinch the winning prize.
Their solution is tagged ‘Let’s Fight Trafficking’ (TFL), and it focuses on the tracking and exposure of human traffickers as well as rescue and rehabilitation of victims.
The software features an e-learning planning platform on human trafficking; a facial recognition system that matches feed from webcams and other images to determine existing cases with similar images in the database.
The software also has a portal for victims’ close friends to file reports about trafficking in their area. Additionally it provides a heat map generated from reports to let users know where trafficking is prevalent and what preventive measures to take.
As the winning team, the Unilag trio would be heading to the Global #Hackathon4Justice event to be held at the Google Headquarters in Silicon Valley, California, United States, in August 2019.
Coming in second place, was a team of four from Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH). Their solution, Athena, is a mobile application that enables people to report crime and emergencies as well as learn about their human rights.
Other schools that participated in the competition include Caleb University, Covenant University, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Obafemi Awolowo University, University of Benin, Babcock University, and Yaba College of Technology.
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