5 SMEs Emerge Winners at W.A.S.H Innovation Fair 2.0 with N3.5m Each

Five Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) at the Water Sanitation Hygiene (WASH) Hackathon Innovation fair 2.0 on Thursday won N3.5 million each with Four months incubation and mentorship programme.

The five innovators pitched their innovative idea that addresses challenges in Nigeria’s Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) sector. These innovators that emerged winners were SCHRODINGER TECH, RETREASURE, JUNKYARD, GREEN CYCLE and SPARKLES.

The programme, which was organised through the partnership of the Financial Centre for Sustainability, Lagos (FC4S LAGOS) and the Nigeria Climate Innovation Centre (NCIC), was sponsored by IHS, one of the largest independent owners, operators and developers of shared communication infrastructure in the world.

Speaking at the event, Engr Suleiman Adamu, Minister of Water Resources, said that WASH provides excellent platform for innovators and entrepreneurs to showcase their ideas

He noted that innovations designed to address challenges of open defecation and enhance access to safe Water, Sanitation and hygiene was salutary.

‘’It is my hope that these ideas, initiatives are brought to fruition so that the startups can contribute to plug into identified gaps for more effective intervention in the sector.

‘’The theme for this year’s fair, innovation for sustainable growth in the sector is timely, I mean against the backdrop of certain concerns about the shortfalls in the issue to access to safe water.

‘’It is also an important condition and a critical role in the development of the nation’s economy,’’ he said.

According to him, it is a critical component of our nation’s economy, it is essential to exploit globally available opportunities for the resolution of the challenges of the sector.

He said that the water sanitation sector offers immense opportunities for investment, job creation, and poverty reduction.

Adamu said that despite the substantial investments in the sector much more still needs to be done to improve access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene for our citizens.

According to him, “the sector is also beset with myriad of challenges mainly medical infrastructure, capacity, as well as poor service delivery at various levels”.

He said that in 2022, stakeholders had to find investment opportunities, estimated at about 3.8 billion US dollars in the WASH sectors.

According to him, this represents a significant opportunity that drive innovations and investment and allow opportunities to integrate creative solutions that would contribute to the resolution of identified challenges.

Adamu said that this initiative would further strengthen governance, improving access to safe water, sanitation and services to all Nigerians.

Through this initiative, the country is poised to be among those countries that have developed local innovative solutions, addressing challenges in the WASH sector.

According to him, hopefully these solutions would help strengthen the national action plan for W.A.S.H and help complement other national initiatives, such as partnership to expand the water supply, sanitation and hygiene which was launched in 2016.

The minister said that it was launched as a national collaborative instrument, to mobilise resources and harness efforts towards improving access to water sanitation and hygiene.

Earlier, Dapo Otunla, Chief Corporate Service Officer, IHS Nigeria, said that the organisation is committed to federal government’s plan to end open defecation by 2025.

He further noted that the firm has donated over 3000 books on open defecation to communities across Nigeria as well as installed 13 mechanised solar boreholes across communities.

According to him, about 138 communities have been impacted and over 18000 lives touched all in the effort to achieve the objectives of the WASH initiative.

Dr Jane Bevan, Chief WASH, Unicef Nigeria in her technical presentation highlighted the challenges of the WASH initiative in Nigeria.

She noted that poor investment in WASH both at the national and sub-national levels were some of the issues affecting the sector in Nigeria.