Nigeria wins Two Awards at WSA Global Congress, Sri Lanka 2013 The oceanic city of Colombo, Sri Lanka, erupted with a digital climax after a week-long United Nations-backed World Summit Award Global Congress on E-Content and creativity Saturday night as the Opon Imo, Osun’s Tablet of Knowledge was recognized as one of the best 4 e-learning devices across the world.
Africa's leading representative, Nigeria, won two awards in eight categories, at the Grand Finale of the ceremony. The award ceremony was the climax of the week-long annual assembly of the world's most innovative e-content initiatives in the following categories: e-Government & Open Data, e-Health & Environment, e-Learning & Science, e-Entertainment & Games, e-Business & Commerce, e-Culture & Tourism, e-Media & Journalism and e-Inclusion & Participation.
The august event was inaugurated by His Excellency, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President of Sri Lanka. The winning projects, TRANSPARENT NIGERIA (e-Government & Open Data category), pioneered by Harvard based Mr. Uchechi Iweala (son of Nigeria's Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala), and OPON IMO - Tablet of Knowledge (e-Learning & Science category) from the State of Osun, triumphed over 421 other innovations for the 2013 Awards vetted by the grand jury of global eminent experts.
The World Summit Awards (WSA) is a project of the International Centre for New Media, which is organised among 190 UN-member States and runs within the United Nations (UN) framework of the World Summit on the Information Society. The World Summit Awards has been an on-going activity since 2003 in cooperation with UNIDO, UNESCO, ITU, ISOC, UN GAID and UNDP.
HOW NIGERIA WON ITS AWARD
Osun’s Tablet of Knowledge, OPON IMO received its award based on the following Grand Jury evaluation) "The State Government of Osun in Nigeria, as part of its strategic mandate to meet the educational needs of students in Osun, commissioned delivery of 150,000 units custom-based Android tablets (a library of easily navigable text books). The tablets are packed in bear rugged leather to protect from harsh conditions of various remote areas of Nigeria and its schools. What makes the project attractive is the archival availability of content in terms of questions for the last ten years for the Senior Secondary students of all 3 levels. Hoping that the students may not be required to look for physical text books, the tablet is enriched with multimedia contents including video, images, text and referential materials and test questions for practice."
TRANSPARENT NIGERIA received its award based on the following Grand Jury evaluation) "Due to corruption issues in the country and the frustration of the people who are less privileged, Transparent Nigeria (a movement to hold the government accountable for its actions) was established. Receiving the data from Ministry of Finance and having an audience of 150,000, which is growing per day, the movement has started to bring to public knowledge the discrepancies which were generally unknown before this spotlight. The jury notes and commends this initiative for helping the citizens of Nigeria and hopefully starting a change in the country which could result into a corruption free Nigeria . The online database of Transparent Nigeria also lets the public know about the spending of the public money by the public servants in Federal and State Governments. In addition to the infrastructure projects that government has promised, cost of these projects, number of jobs, which will be created and even the public servants compensations are also monitored.”
The grandeur of the closing ceremony obviously sets the tone for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) coming up at the same venue, same city, in the next two weeks in Sri Lanka. Professor Peter Bruck, Chairman of WSA and, the Secretary to the Government of Sri Lanka, Mr. Lalith Weeratunga drew the curtains on this Year's event. The next event comes up in 2015.
