Union Bank has kicked off celebrations to mark its 100th anniversary in Nigeria having been established in 1917.
As part of this celebrations, the bank has come up with The Centenary Innovation Challenge to engage eligible young and talented people across Nigeria to submit novel ideas that address some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are of immediate interest to Union Bank. Applicants are encouraged to propose innovative ideas that solve fundamental social and commercial challenges faced by Nigerians in a range of sectors starting in one community but potentially scalable across the nation.
Eligibility
University students, software developers, academics and entrepreneurs across Nigeria to submit novel ideas that address challenges related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including financial inclusion, Agriculture and Education starting in one community but potentially scalable across the nation.
The top 3 selected ideas will attract immediate cash prizes of 2 Million, N 1.5 Million and N 1 Million naira respectively and further incubation support via the Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB) incubation services with full engagement with Union Bank.
The challenge is not open to:
- Employees of any company within the Union Bank Group or employees of other financial institutions (commercial banks, microfinance banks, insurance companies, brokerages, investment companies).
- Anyone professionally involved in the development or administration of this Challenge
- Any employee whose employer’s guidelines or regulations do not allow entry in the Challenge.
To enter the competition, the entrant(s) must meet the following criteria (submission requirements) and confirm acceptance of these terms and conditions.
- Project/product/concept title.
- Entrant’s name(s).
- Entrant’s description (e.g. software developer/academic/entrepreneur /student/other).
- University or company name (if applicable).
- Email address(es)
- Phone number(s).
- City where entrant(s) is/are based.
- All submissions must include a full description of the project/product/concept in a document written in plain English and up to a maximum of 1,000 words. Each document should be split into three separate sections:
- An outline of the problem that your idea addresses; this could be an issue specific to your city or the country, or this could be a global issue. These ideas could be related but not limited to financial inclusion, agriculture and education.
- An explanation of your idea, how it relates to Sustainable Development Goals, and how it will work; provide clear details about how your idea will help to solve the problem you’ve outlined in (1) and demonstrate how the solution provides business and social and/or environmental value.
- An explanation of how your solution can be scaled into a successful business model.
- The entry or any part of it must not have won any previous awards.
- The entry materials (document and video) must be submitted online.
- Entry begins on 12th April 2017, and ends on 19th May 2017.
- The 3 best ideas from the challenge will be supported to bring their ideas to life through the CcHub Incubation Programme from June – December, 2017
FAQs can be found here.