Wema Bank has emphasized the need for financial institutions as well as the Nigerian technology space to keep innovating and groom young players, this is as it plans to bring together 10,000 young innovators from across Nigeria as well as Africa at the fourth edition of Hackaholics. The bank said it will be giving out to N3 million, N2.5 million and N1.5 million to the first three winners with another N1 million going to the best women led techpreneur. The fourth edition according to Executive Director, Digital Services of the bank, Tunde Mabawonku will be focused on building finance beyond technology. This year’s Hackaholics, which is focusing on building finance beyond technology, will be looking for entries with innovative solutions on how to solve gender violence, promote entertainment, among others. Mabawonku said the bank, through the project, would be engaging 10000 tech entrepreneurs, producing 5000 solutions, creating 6 pitch centres and having almost one million foot falls during the course of the campaign. “Just as we redefined experiential banking with ALAT, Hackaholics is at the heart of our innovative project for startups. We are poised to host the largest campus hackathon this year. Hackaholics 4.0 which is in partnership with Microsoft, Amazon, Endeavour Africa, Meta, Paystack amongst others is expected to draw students from all parts of world and particularly Nigeria with touchpoints in Babcock University, Lagos State University. University of Abuja. University of Benin, Federal University of Tech, Akure, and University of Lagos. Also speaking, the bank’s Chief Digital Officer, Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi said the bank has successfully disrupted the digital banking ecosystem by producing the first digital bank and creating a unique experiential banking with ALAT. “We have been driving with the mindset of innovation. We are looking to be an ecosystem of platforms, a hub for fintech and other players. We are moving to the next phase of digital unbundling”, Adeniyi said.
