After competing with other Teams in the National Finals of the 2016 edition of Microsoft Nigeria Imagine Cup held Friday in Lagos, Team Humane from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife emerged winners of this year’s competition. Microsoft Imagine Cup is the premier student technology program and competition, and a cornerstone of the Microsoft YouthSpark initiative. It provides an opportunity for student technologists, developers and aspiring entrepreneurs from all academic backgrounds to collaborate, develop a technology application, create a business plan and gain a keen understanding of what is needed to bring a concept to market. Microsoft Imagine National Finals winners: From left: Otalu Babatunde, Victor Shoaga, Obasegun Ayode, and Oyatope Blessing, Team Humane from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife in a short demo shortly they were announced as the national winners at the weekend at the Microsoft office in Lagos . They will compete in the Middle-East and Africa finals for a ticket to the World-Wide Finals. Photo by Emeka Aginam. This year National finals competition had eleven participating teams drawn from various tertiary institutions within the country. The winning team, Team Humane, which comprised of Otaru Babatunde, Oyatope Blessing, Shoaga Victor, and Ayodele Obasegun, competed in the World Citizenship Category. Their solution, Humane is a solution for the visually impaired, which enables them to interact and navigate freely on their mobile phones. The solution comes with an accompanying hardware known as the Humane handle, which interacts with apps installed on a device using Bluetooth. A visually impaired person would be able to navigate through various apps installed on his/her mobile phone using the handle and an integrated voice navigation system. Speaking shortly after announcement, the team spokesperson, Ayodele Obasegun said they were concerned about solving a major challenge leveraging technology hence, embarked on this project. “We have been developing solutions for various organizations, and we felt a need to impact our community and the world as a whole, hereafter this solution for the visually impaired. It was initially targeted at gaming for the visually impaired, but later we felt we can do more than gaming.” , he said. Commenting on the team’s winning, Obasegun said, “We are very happy. As part of our dedication on this solution we have been on a booth camp for weeks to ensure there would be no errors on this project, so it is quite exciting that we eventually emerged winner. We had earlier participated in the competition two years back (2014), we took the reviews and feedback from the previous competition and I must say it paid off. We took these feedbacks and refined our solutions to what it is now, we are so happy we won, also we appreciate the feedbacks we got from friends, developers’ community and from our Head of Department at school.” Also speaking at the National finals, Director, Developer Evangelism, Microsoft Nigeria, Shina Oyetosho explained that, “Microsoft is committed in empowering students to become the next generation of innovators, entrepreneurs and developers, the competition inspires student developers around the world to create innovative solutions that change the way we live, work and play while also growing the skills they need to pursue a future in technology.” According to Oyetosho who is passionate about youth empowerent using technology, “This competition also provides student developers the opportunity to learn through competition by helping to drive new skill development and inspiring collaboration and teambuilding.” With this development, Team Humane will on to compete in the Middle East and Africasemi-finals, for a place at the world finals schedule to hold in Seattle, Washington in July this year. Others teams that received laurels during this year competition include; Team Elite from the Ajayi Crowther University that came in as second runner-up wi