The Headfort Foundation for Justice says it is seeking partnerships and collaborations to scale technology-driven solutions developed by participants in the Unleash Africa 2026 programme.
The Programmes Manager of the foundation, Miss Oluwakemi Adenekan, stated this on the sidelines of the two-day Unleash Hack 2026 programme in Lagos.
Adenekan said the programme provided participants with an opportunity to identify community problems and develop technology-driven solutions to address them.
She said the solutions focused on community safety, institutional accountability and access to justice.
“Today, the different teams are pitching their ideas and what they have been able to come up with, based on what we discussed yesterday.
“They have been able to develop different solutions in those areas, and it has really been amazing seeing what they have been able to come up with,” she said.
According to her, the foundation was looking forward to partnerships and collaborations that would enable the solutions to attract support and achieve greater impact.
Adenekan said the end of the programme should not be regarded as the end of the participants’ innovation journey.
“This is not the final day. We are looking to scale those solutions and, of course, partnership and collaborations too,” she said.
She expressed appreciation to the foundation’s partners, Civic Hive and Unleash, for their collaboration in making the programme possible.
Meanwhile, Mr Joseph Amenaghawon, Head of Civic Hive, urged Nigerian youths to harness their energy and creativity to develop civic technology solutions to address national challenges.
Amenaghawon said the Unleash Hack initiative was designed to create an atmosphere and opportunity for young people to turn their ideas into practical solutions.
According to him, the hackathon focused on issues including access to justice, transparency and accountability, with participants developing civic technology solutions.
“The general idea is to tap into the energies of young people and enable them have that atmosphere, that opportunity to bring their ideas to fruition.
“This is shaped as a hackathon to look at some of the issues that young people are concerned about, including access to justice, transparency and accountability.
“We want to see if they have budding ideas they can formulate and then develop some civic tech solutions around,” he said.
Amenaghawon said the presentations showed that young Nigerians were concerned about critical national issues and willing to deploy their skills to address them.
He cited road safety and access to justice as examples of solutions developed during the exercise.
“You can see from the presentations that they made, they are looking at very critical issues in Nigeria.
“Those focusing on safety on our roads, for instance, and those also focusing on the whole challenge around justice,” he said.
He expressed hope that the ideas generated would eventually translate into practical solutions that could benefit Nigerians.
“It all goes to show that young people are concerned about these issues and they are looking at how they can deploy their energies into dealing with these challenges.
“We are very hopeful that their ideas can translate into actual solutions that the majority of Nigerians can use,” Amenaghawon said.
On the growing interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI), he urged Nigerian youths to understand the technology and its value before adopting it widely.
Amenaghawon said AI was complex and Nigerians were only beginning to understand its various capabilities.
“AI is complex, and we are only just seeing literally features of it. But it requires us to be very, very diligent.
“What Nigerian youths and the rest of us can do is to fully understand what it means and the value it can bring to our lives.
“If we don’t, we are probably going to be left behind and we’ll only just be feeding on the remnants,” he said.
He, however, cautioned against using AI indiscriminately, saying the technology had valuable applications but required careful consideration.
According to him, some of the presentations at the hackathon demonstrated how AI could be integrated into civic technology solutions.
“There is value-addition in what AI can do, but there is also the need for us to be very cautious about adopting it and using it for everything,” Amenaghawon said.
