Crafted by Willie Aniebiet. You can find him on Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/aniebiet )
After bustling for the last Monday of the month of August, health experts, developers and enthusiasts hung out at Lagos State e-Learning Centre for the August Edition of Mobile Monday. Representatives from the World Bank were exceptionally punctual. The event slated for 5:00pm saw just a few attendees available at the set time; the ‘African-time’ bug. A well known figure in the Tech-Space in Nigeria, Tomi Davies, welcomed participants and painstakingly registered each unregistered participant in his “database”.
The event kicked off with a networking session on the second floor of the e-Learning centre. An unusual snack, ‘Guguru and Epa’, or better still finger food was available for participants to munch as the networking session went on. Those who arrived earlier had the opportunity to interact with more participants and eat more Guguru and Epa; a well deserved reward.The representatives from the World Bank seemed to be making most of the time as they were meeting everyone in the networking space.
At 6:30pm, participants moved to the third floor for the Presentation session which turned out to be quite an interesting one.
‘Smile… It’s Monday’ , a hint of what the evening had to offer and an introduction of the speakers by Mayowa Owolabi set the ball rolling. Undoubtedly, we all could not wait!
Presentations
One Percent Project
Temie Giwa of the One Percent Project, kicked off by giving an incredibly short but detailed talk on some of their products. Worthy of note, Lifebank is a mobile and web based application that connects volunteer blood donors to those that need blood and will prove very useful especially during emergencies. Lifebank, she said, is building a database of volunteer blood donors, their locations, and blood group so that emergencies that require blood transfusion, will have blood donors around the location of the emergency with a matching blood group alerted.
Lifebank project stems from the inadequacy of the Blood Bank facilities in Nigeria. According to the stats she provided, there are just about 17 government owned blood banks in the country. Lifebank was built during a 48 hour health centric hackathon by a team of 4, at the Co Creation Hub. Plans to partner with government are underway. Lifebank is currently in an incubation stage, and is currently being made robust. Temie encouraged attendees of Momo to donate blood while some wondered if they could donate more than blood!! Generous Nigerians!
By the way, Lifebank is Open Source. Developers in the house?? Yeah! You can get the source code through GitHub using the name Lifebank. (Disclaimer! MoMo is not responsible for any misinformation concerning the presence of the source on GitHub… Just so you don’t get disappointed). Temie’s presentation can be found below.
Lifesaver
Sequel to Temie, Adekunle Jinadu of LifeSaver, described LifeSaver as a mobile application that saves lives by reporting emergencies. The application, thrives on the location of the users (Remember last month’s LBS?) to provide information relevant to them. The app has a long list of features and is currently on both Windows and Google stores.
Do well to download and utilise the application. Who knows?? Just saying….
Kunle’s presentation can be found below.
Sproxil
Sproxil is at the forefront of the combat against counterfeit medicine alongside NAFDAC. Karim Giwa of Sproxil presented their solution, Mobile Product Authentication (MPA). MPA works thus; Before buying a product, consumers scratch off part of the Sproxil security label on a product to reveal a unique, unit-specific code that they can text toll-free to a phone number. They then receive a reply from Sproxil, confirming that the product is genuine or warning that it is potentially fake or has been stolen.
Sproxil is currently operating from Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria and USA.
Questions were raised about how secure the solution, Mobile Product Authentication is. SIM Registration enforced by the Nigerian Communication Commission, NCC, makes it especially difficult in Nigeria for counterfeiters to duplicate the MPA solution. Also, for a solution such as this to get accepted, the OGA-AT-THE-TOP that polices illicit drug activities in Nigeria, NAFDAC, would have to endorse. This makes it difficult for the trademarked solution to be duplicated. Karim’s presentation can be found below
At the end of the presentations, the moderator, Mayowa Owolabi and the chairman of Mobile Monday Nigeria, Chairman congratulated the participants of the August Edition of Mobile Monday on becoming members of Mobile Monday. However, from August henceforth, members are expected to pay a token of #1500 and #3000 for student-members and professional members respectively, as annual membership fees. The token/fee is meant to cater for the smooth-running of the event. Enthusiasts that are not interested in paying the annual membership fee can pay-per-event , at the rate of #200 per event and #500 per event for student and professional enthusiasts respectively.
The Presentation Session of the event was wrapped up and proceedings for a final Networking session which was to be centered around the speakers of the day went down at the second floor of the e-Learning Center. This time, attendees were indulged with full-bodied snacks and soda 🙂
So if you were not at the Mobile Monday event on Monday, please answer this simple question.
Where were you??
Another opportunity is coming up on the 30th of September and it promises to be more exciting. Keep your fingers crossed and be on the lookout for the event theme on the Mobile Monday website and remember to pay your membership dues. 🙂