The second software incubation centre located at Tinapa in Cross River state will be officially launch today by Omobola Johnson, minister of Communications Technology.
The launch is heralded with the Hackathon competition which started on Tuesday, July 30 with 27 contestants who were grouped into a team of 10.
Software incubation centre is an initiative of the Federal Government and driven by private sector under the aegis of Information Technology Developers Entrepreneurship Accelerator (iDEA).
The iDEA Hackathon competition is a 42-hour app-building contest where the most innovative application will receive a cash prize of N450, 000 and two Z10 blackberry phones.
There are also cash prizes for second and third most innovative Apps.
Judges have been carefully selected from top IT firms like Microsoft, Nokia, Google to preside over the Apps developed by the contestants in the last 42-hour.
The Hackathon competition is being facilitated by the Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria (ISPON).
Winners of the competition will be announced during the launch of the iDEA Centre in Tinapa Knowledge City, Calabar.
It will be recalled that iDEA Lagos centre was launched about 12 weeks ago, and has since then commenced operation fully.
Information Technology Developers Entrepreneurship Accelerator (iDEA), a tech incubator whose purpose is to help Nigerian entrepreneurs create successful businesses. It provides essential support to entrepreneurs to build software skills.
iDEA is the brainchild of Johnson and is being implemented by the National Information Technology Agency (NITDA) through its consultants, High-Tech Data Systems Ltd.