More than 1,600 university students from across Nigeria applied for the 2026 GTCO HabariPay Squad Hackathon. During the event, young developers unveiled artificial intelligence-driven solutions targeting unemployment, financial fraud, agricultural inefficiencies, and workplace productivity.
HabariPay, the fintech subsidiary of Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc, organised the competition on Saturday. The event highlights a growing trend among Nigerian youths: using artificial intelligence to solve practical economic and social challenges rather than simple, consumer-facing digital tasks.
Strict Screening Filters 1,600 Applicants
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According to Eduofon Japhet, Managing Director of HabariPay, undergraduates from various Nigerian universities submitted more than 1,600 applications. Organisers shortlisted over 600 participants based on their technical competence, prior projects, and collaborative capability.
“We had over 1,600 submissions and selected more than 600 participants based on the quality of their teams, their technical skill sets, and the projects they had previously built, including their GitHub portfolios,” Japhet told TechMarge.
Slightly above 500 students ultimately attended the physical event in Lagos following a rigorous screening process.
Japhet explained that this year’s edition deliberately focused on applying artificial intelligence to real-world challenges within Nigeria’s economy, including insecurity, unemployment, and fraud.
“Beyond using AI to write emails and do mundane tasks, we gave participants actual problems that exist in the economy and asked them to apply artificial intelligence to solving them,” she stated.
She added that participation grew more than tenfold compared to previous years. Testimonials from past participants, who became advocates for the programme within their campuses and professional networks, drove this massive growth.
Multi-Year Mentorship and Tuition Support
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Beyond the hackathon itself, Japhet disclosed that outstanding participants will enter a long-term mentorship and development programme lasting between two and three years.
Under this initiative, selected students will receive tuition support, technical training, practical work experience, and potential employment opportunities within HabariPay and the wider GTCO ecosystem.
“We mentor them, pay their tuition fees, expose them to real-life work and, at the end of the programme, many of them become part of our workforce,” she told TechMarge.
Segun Agbaje, Group Chief Executive Officer of Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc, described the shortlisted students as “the best of the best.” He urged them to prioritising teamwork, resilience, and integrity throughout the competition.
“You are already winners because you dared to apply and were selected from a highly competitive field,” Agbaje said. “There is no real victory in cheating. The joy of winning comes from playing by the rules and doing it properly.”
Students Pitch Real-World Innovations
Victory Azuonye, a logistics and transport technology student at the Federal University of Technology, Minna, led Team Code Flex.
Azuonye travelled from Kaduna State to build SignalOS, a WhatsApp and USSD-based platform. The system helps banks and formal institutions identify economically active Nigerians who operate in the informal economy but remain excluded from formal financial networks.
“A lot of Nigerians are economically active but financially invisible because the formal system does not recognise them,” he explained. “Using signals from their daily activities, banks can know who is consistent, who is growing, and who can be trusted with financing or grants.”
The solution targets a long-standing economic challenge in Nigeria: the hurdle millions of informal workers face when trying to access credit without standard financial documentation.
Another participant, Moses Edache from Ahmadu Bello University, led Team Sapphire to develop an AI-powered agricultural e-commerce platform that reduces fraud in produce transactions.
The platform integrates Squad payment APIs with escrow services. This setup temporarily holds buyer funds until artificial intelligence systems confirm that the delivered agricultural products match the original online listing.
“Our car broke down on the way, we missed our flight, and we spent the night at the airport still building,” Edache shared with TechMarge. “It was exhausting, but the experience built resilience, courage, and confidence.”
Finalists Tackle Remote Work Productivity
While neither Team Code Flex nor Team Sapphire advanced into the top 50 finalists, Sheriff Sanni, a Computer Science student at the University of Lagos, successfully led Team XYZ into the final rounds.
Sanni presented an AI-powered workforce monitoring platform designed to help employers assess the productivity of both remote and on-site employees.
The system tracks browser activity during work hours, analyses behavioural patterns using artificial intelligence, and generates productivity reports for employers. It also protects privacy by allowing employees to pause monitoring during approved breaks.
“There are many remote workers whose employers cannot verify what they do during the day,” Sanni told a source. “Our platform helps employers confirm that workers are delivering on expectations.”
