9th October, 2019
Chiniki Guard, a Nigerian Information Communication Technology (ICT) start-up application, has won the best prize of 10,000 USD in the Artificial Intelligence category competition at the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX) taking place in Dubai.
GITEX is an annual biggest global technology gathering in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, with the theme: “Synergising the Mind and Technology Economy.”
Chiniki Guard is an artificial intelligence security solution for retail stores and supermarkets, designed to monitor, detect and alert shop owners about shoplifting and suspicious behaviour in real-time.
Chiniki Guard was among the 34 start-ups in the category of the Supanova finalists at the GITEX Future stars competition.
The Founder of Chiniki Guard, Mr Abdulhakim Bashir, said the opportunities at GITEX helped him to come out tops.
Bashir also said that the exhibition would enable him to widen the scope of his business.
He said that he would launch the application after GITEX and move to the cloud for data storage to accommodate the number of requests from shop owners.
According to him, Nigerians have potential that can transform the economy but the private sector needs to be involved.
Also, 247Medic, a health ICT application that connects doctors with patients across Nigeria within a maximum waiting time of 10 minutes and provides auxiliary services, including lab testing, doorstep delivery of drugs, also made it to the finals at the competition.
Other Nigerian start-ups at the exhibition included Blue Circle of Notitia, a health application that digitise patients’ medical history, and Zowasel, an agritech application to improve value chain.
Naira Packet, also among the start-ups, is a solution that reduces the cost of microtransactions and Sublime Square.
It is an online platform designed to ensure efficiency in waste evacuation and management.
Meanwhile, Mr Jose Rubinger, a co-Founder of Key2Enable, a start-up domiciled in the US and Brazil, which is an assistive technology for the disabled to write and type with keyboard, won the grand prize of 100,000 USD for overall start-ups competition.
Nigeria’s participation at GITEX was spearheaded by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), while Nigeria Postal Service, Nigeria Communication Satellite Limited, Nigeria Petroleum Exchange Commission and Petroleum Equalisation Fund Management Board, were among Nigeria’s representatives at the exhibition.
The start-ups were mentored and supervised by the Office for ICT Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a subsidiary of NITDA.