This year, A team (Brycoal Nigeria) of three undergraduate students of Bayero University, Kano (BUK) has made it onto the 40 teams shortlisted for the $1 million Hult Prize, the world’s largest student competition.
The Hult Prize was established by Bertil Hult and is an annual, year-long competition that crowd-sources ideas from MBA and college students after challenging them to solve a pressing social issue around topics such as food security, water access, energy, and education.
The Hult family – founders of EF Education First – donates USD 1 million in seed capital to help the winning team launch a social enterprise.
The competition is about creating market-ready solutions to the pressing needs of humanity while maintaining a balance between profit and social impact. Its goals are in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.
The students, Ubaidurrahman Sulaiman, Mustapha Sani Abdullahi, and Abdulhafeez Adebayo, have won the contest at the campus level with their innovation and then at the regional level in Abuja.
Brycoal Nigeria would be competing at the global stage in the UK alongside 39 teams comprising of hundreds of students from many world-class universities around the world.
Team Brycoal Nigeria invented a solar-powered device that allows for crop waste to be utilized for job creation in rural communities, through the production of charcoal briquettes.
They are presently running the pilot project in Kura Local Government Area of Kano State where they recycle the enormous crop waste from the massive agriculture in the area and then produce charcoal from it.
The team single-handedly funded the project and called on Nigerians to patronize their charcoal briquettes to enable them raise funds to improve on the project.
Currently, Brycoal Nigeria are at Ashridge Business School in London competing with 39 other teams.
Support them in developing this technology by embarking on this journey with them. If successful in this competition, the technology would create 10,000 jobs for Nigerian youths in 10 years. Please share and repost.
Post Authors:
Usman Kamalluddeen Mahmud (BUK), Badiru Sulaimon(BUK).