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OAU, Unilag students win BlueChip Inter-Campus Machine Learning competition
After an intensive 5-day learning bootcamp, Olajide Abdulrazzaq Folarin (from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State), Sadiq Aderinto and Stanley Obumneme Dukor (both of the University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos) jointly won the first Inter-Campus Machine Learning competition.
Sponsored by Bluechip Technologies and organised by Data Science Nigeria, the three first-place winners individually earned the highest score for machine learning algorithm development.
The bootcamp was facilitated by 11 visiting international experts in artificial intelligence, 5 online tutors and 15 Nigerian-based business leaders.
More than 10,000 students from 95 campuses participated in the 4-stage competition. It included a pre-qualification pre-study, a quiz, a Kaggle competition and a validation call.
The top 85 students competed at the 5-day all-expenses-paid bootcamp at the Peninsula Resort, Lekki-Ajah Expressway, Lagos, from 10-14 October 2018.
At the bootcamp, the students were immersed in intensive sessions of theoretical learning, use case applications, face-to-face teaching, virtual online classes, and a hands-on hackathon using the newly launched Zindi platform for real-time model evaluation.
Distinguished data scientists from leading global institutions including Google’s AI Lab, GitHub, MIIA and Bankable Frontiers Associate, USA facilitated the sessions.
Leading executives from the Nigerian banking, telecommunications, energy, and investment sectors shared their invaluable contextual insights with the students.
The Inter-Campus Machine Learning competition strives to increase Nigeria’s experience and expertise in data science and to enhance the opportunities and employability of Nigerian students through an incentivized exposure to advanced world-class knowledge.
Data Science is now the world’s no. 1 career, and is critical to high-impact transformation and innovation in Nigeria and worldwide.
In order to ensure the maximum inclusive participation, all the participants who travelled to the bootcamp from outside Lagos received full travel grant, while 10 additional special provisions were made for ladies who did not meet the cut-off selection mark.
The bootcamp included participants from all six geopolitical zones of Nigeria.
Mr Bayo Adekanmbi, convener, Data Science Nigeria, in his welcome speech, said, “in our quest to play big in the Artificial Intelligence space, we must raise our game and combine the best of theoretical knowledge and real use cases with solution orientation, hence our tutorial approach of having world-class experts from leading AI centres in the world and local business leaders at the bootcamp”.
Olumide Soyombo, the co-founder of Bluechip Technologies Limited, shared Bluechip’s 10-year story and inspired the participants about the possibilities of artificial intelligence and how the students could leverage their knowledge to become technology entrepreneurs.
A group photograph of facilitators and participants at the Inter-campus Machine Learning competition.
Mr. Soyombo emphasized the importance of collaborative learning, network building and high-quality solution orientation.
He said, “We are proud to sponsor the 1st ever Intercampus Machine Learning Competition as part of our 10th anniversary, which is a demonstration of our commitment to knowledge development, especially in strategic areas like AI which will shape the future and make the world a better place”.
Kazeem Tewogbade, the managing director of Bluechip Technologies Limited, said “Bluechip Technologies is excited to have created a platform that brought together some of the world’s best and Nigeria’s budding talent across over 90 higher institutions.
“We are convinced that Nigeria is raising a new breed of experts that will play big on the global space”.
Each of the three winners received $1,000 US dollars and an opportunity for a short-term internship at the Bluechip technology firm.
In addition, campus volunteers from the universities with the highest number of participants in the pre-qualification process were also rewarded for promoting and mobilizing participation in the competition.
The University of Lagos, Ladoke Akintola University Ogbomoso, and the University of Ibadan campus volunteers received N150,000, N100,000 and N50,000 respectively.
Some of the speakers at the bootcamp included Matt Grasser, Director, Inclusive Fintech, Bankable Frontiers Associate, USA; Moustapha Cisse PhD, Google AI Lab; Professor Tom Dietterich, Distinguished Professor and Director, Oregon State University and the founder of BigML; Dr Emmanuel Doro, Principal Data Scientist, Jet.com, USA; Dr Sulaimon Afolabi, Argility, South Africa; Ekow Duker, ex-Chief Analytics Officer of Barclays Africa/MD IxioAnalytics, South Africa;
Other were Dr Jacques Ludik, CEO of Cortex Logic, South Africa; Karim Beguir, the founder/CEO of Instadeep AI, London; Omoju Miller PhD, Senior Data Scientist, GitHub, USA; Abiodun Modupe, PhD Researcher, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; Adewale Akinfaderin, Graduate Researcher, FSU & Senior Data Scientist, Lowe’s Inc., USA; Osayi Igharo, Founding and Managing partner, Ripple VC, San Francisco, SA; Robert John, Chief Data Scientist at Enter5ive and.
In addition to theoretical and hands-on exploration of topics like Anomaly detection, unsupervised classification, sequential rule mining, Deep Learning theories, Deep learning in Natural language processing; the bootcamp attendees spent time brainstorming on real business problems which were facilitated by the leadership teams of companies like FCMB (credit risk scoring), Terragon Group (AdTech recommendation), Guardian News (recommendation system), Octave Analytics (Financial inclusion geomapping), Axa Mansard (AI for insurance) and Microsoft (possibilities in MS Azure).
The bootcamp focused on applying Artificial Intelligence to a real-world problem of financial inclusion in Nigeria.
The bootcamp’s Machine Learning Hackathon was based on loan default models for an anonymised real-world dataset of low-income customers and required the participants to use geographical data (longitude and latitude), historical usage and mobile phone behaviour to determine the likely risk of loan defaults, as captured here.
Telecom operators in Nigeria invested more than $1 billion in 2025 to deploy over 2,850 new sites, boosting nationwide coverage and capacity, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
NCC
The investment details emerged in the just-released 2025 Network Performance Reports, announced by Dr. Aminu Maida, executive vice chairman (EVC), NCC.
Speaking at an engagement on the reports, Dr. Maida emphasised the regulator’s focus on transparent, data-driven oversight.
“Through our collaboration with Ookla, we are providing independent insights into real-world network performance and the lived experience of Nigerians across cities, rural communities, highways, and emerging 5G zones,” he said.
The Q4 2025 reports highlight steady gains in network quality, including improved median download speeds in urban and rural areas compared to Q3.
The video Quality of Experience gap between urban and rural zones has also narrowed, bolstered by a stronger 4G backbone.
Dr. Maida noted ongoing challenges, such as 5G service gaps and upload speed disparities. “We are actively engaging with operators to address these issues, including gaps in mobile service coverage,” he added.
Operators have committed to surpassing their 2025 investment levels in 2026, with infrastructure rollout set to intensify.
“We look forward to continued collaboration with industry stakeholders as we translate these insights into better connectivity, improved service quality, and a more inclusive digital future for all Nigerians,” the EVC concluded.
Airtel Africa’s profit after tax grew to $586 million in the nine months ended December 31, 2025, up from $248 million in the corresponding period of 2024.
According to the company’s nine-month financial results released on Friday, the higher profit after tax in the current period was driven by higher operating profit and derivative and foreign exchange gains of $99 million, as compared to $153 million in derivative and foreign exchange losses in the prior period.
It disclosed that the group’s revenues in reported currency increased by 28.3 percent to $4,667 million, with constant currency growth of 24.6 percent. Reported currency revenue growth at a premium to constant currency growth reflects currency appreciation in key markets. In Q3’26, constant currency revenue growth improved to 24.7 percent from 24.2 percent in the previous quarter (Q2’26).
“Constant currency revenue growth was supported by tariff adjustments driving a 50.6 percent growth in Nigeria and a strong performance in Francophone Africa, which saw revenues accelerate to 17.0 percent in the nine months.”
In Nigeria, revenue grew by 50.4 percent in constant currency, largely driven by continued strength in the demand for data services, further supported by the tariff adjustments. The constant currency revenue growth was driven by ARPU growth of 39.6 percent and customer base growth of 7.8 percent.
“In reported currency, revenue grew by 52.1 percent to $1,123 million, with Q3’26 revenue growth accelerating to 70.9 percent compared to constant currency growth of 52.9 percent.
“Significantly higher reported currency growth during the quarter compared to constant currency growth was due to the appreciation in Nigerian naira from a weighted average NGN/USD rate of 1,627 in Q3’25 to NGN/USD 1,456 in the current quarter,” it disclosed.
Insights from Airtel’s financials revealed that voice revenue in Nigeria grew by 35.8 percent in constant currency, driven by voice ARPU growth of 26.0 percent, reflecting the tariff adjustments earlier in the year.
Data revenue also grew by 65.4 percent in constant currency as a function of both data customer and data ARPU growth of 8.0 percent and 49.7 percent, respectively. Data usage per customer increased by 26.2 percent to 10.7 GB per month (from 8.4 GB in the prior period), with smartphone penetration increasing 4.6 percent to reach 54.1 percent. Smartphone data usage per customer reached 13.4 GB per month compared to 11.2 GB per month in the prior period.
Sunil Taldar, chief executive officer, said these results highlight the strength of our strategy, with strong operating and financial trends across the business.
He added that “During the quarter, we accelerated investment to enhance coverage and data capacity while also expanding our fibre network. Coupling this investment with innovative partnerships strengthens our customer proposition and positions us to capture the considerable growth opportunity across our markets.
Digitisation, technology innovation, and embedding AI in our processes will also optimise the customer experience with increased digital offerings and closer integration of GSM and Airtel Money services, allowing us to unlock the strong demand across our markets.
Smartphone adoption continues to increase with a penetration of 48.1 percent, and we are seeing solid progress in the development of our home broadband business, reflecting the need for reliable, high-speed connectivity across our markets.
“Our push to enhance financial inclusion across the continent continues to gain momentum with our Mobile Money customer base expanding to 52 million, surpassing the 50 million milestone.
Annualised total processed value of over $210 billion in Q3’26 underscores the depth of our merchants, agents, and partner ecosystem and remains a key player in driving improved access to financial services across Africa. We remain on track for the listing of Airtel Money in the first half of 2026.
“Disciplined execution on cost efficiency, alongside accelerating revenue growth, has enabled another sequential improvement in our quarterly EBITDA margin to 49.6 percent, underpinning constant currency EBITDA growth of 31 percent, and we remain focused on driving further incremental margin improvements.
“Our strategic priorities remain clear: to continue investing in best-in-class connectivity, accelerate financial inclusion through our mobile money platform, and deliver an exceptional customer experience. These results reinforce our confidence in the long-term potential of our markets and our ability to create value for all our stakeholders,” he added.
David Adeoye Abodunrin, Africa’s foremost AI transformations coach and internationally recognised futurist, has declared that the continent’s immense potential can only be unlocked when purpose is aligned with strategic intelligence.
David Adeoye Abodunrin
Speaking to ICT editors in Lagos, Abodunrin—renowned for nearly three decades of multidisciplinary expertise spanning artificial intelligence disruption, digital governance, behavioural intelligence, cybersecurity, and human capital transformation—said Africa must embrace AI as a transformational frontier rather than a mere tool.
“AI is not merely a tool, it is a transformational frontier that can unlock prosperity, resilience and leadership for Africans in the global digital era,” Abodunrin stated.
Abodunrin, widely sought after by C-suite executives, policymakers, founders and institutional boards, is recognised internationally as a foresight architect and strategic transformation coach. His mission, he explained, is to help individuals, governments and organisations engineer strategic advantage through anticipatory intelligence and ethically aligned innovation.
His work focuses on decoding emergent AI and intelligence systems that reshape markets, redefine competitive advantage, and enable sovereign digital ecosystems.
He is also a 14-time international bestselling author whose frameworks integrate behavioural psychology, foresight strategy and digital sovereignty to prepare leaders for future complexities. Through his organisations, including Cubed Integrated Consulting and Cyberfore Consulting, Abodunrin equips governments, boards, and enterprises with tools to build secure, future-ready institutions that thrive amid volatility.
He stressed that Africa’s transformation must be rooted in local contexts and values, not imported wholesale from global models.
“In Africa, transformation must not just follow global models, it must reflect our cultures, our challenges and our collective aspirations,” he emphasised. “This continent holds immense potential; we simply need to align purpose with strategic intelligence to unlock it.”
His coaching and advisory services emphasise strategic AI governance tailored for African economies, executive and leadership transformation for sustained institutional resilience, digital and cyber intelligence frameworks to protect sovereign infrastructure, and behavioural intelligence and insights for inclusive growth and innovation.
Despite his international recognition, Abodunrin insists that his philosophy centres on African solutions for African realities—developing local talent, embedding ethical AI adoption, and fostering foresight strategies that account for Africa’s unique socio-economic ecosystems.
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