Technology
Winners Emerge in NCDMB Local Content Hackathon
By Adedapo Adesanya
Five teams have emerged as winners in the Nigerian Oil and Gas Technology (NOGTECH) Hackathon sponsored by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB).
At the event, which was held over the weekend in Lagos, the panel of judges picked projects from Fuel Intellisense, Homefort Energy, Gricd Mote, Kiakia Gas and Airsynq as the most innovative and bankable.
During the grand finale of the programme, which specifically took place on Saturday, 15 semi-finalists made presentations on their innovations.
Each of the five winning teams received a cheque of $10,000 equity-free grant and will proceed to participate in a 3-month incubation programme during which they will get workspace, expert mentors, global partners and market access to the nation’s oil and gas industry, ensuring they become commercial and investor-ready.
Speaking at the event, the Executive Secretary of NCDMB, Mr Simbi Wabote, announced that the board will support the five firms in their product development phase, drawing from the $50 million Nigerian Content Research & Development Intervention Fund.
The board’s support, he said, will go into helping the companies get patents for their innovations and produce prototypes, supporting them to conduct field trials, business start-up as well as provide industry linkages.
He, however, confirmed that the board’s funding would depend on the success of the product incubation phase, stressing that “the goal is to fund bankable businesses, not charities.”
He explained that the sponsorship of the NOGTECH Hackathon is within the board’s mandate, hinting that section 70 of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act empowers “the board to engage in targeted capacity and capability development interventions and conduct studies, research, investigation, workshops and trainings aimed at advancing the development of Nigerian content.”
In May 2020, during the height of COVID-19 lockdown, the board announced the event because it saw the opportunity to create a platform for local creation of digital technologies to solve problems for the Nigerian society.
He added that NCDMB was also keen to stimulate the participants to channel their intelligence and become successful entrepreneurs.
Mr Wabote counselled the five winning teams to be clear about their vision and strategy and retain their passion, stressing that their motivation should not be on making quick financial gains, rather on innovating solutions, making a difference and contributing to the society.
According to him, “All the greatest inventors, particularly in the technology space did not start by looking for money as the objective. They started because they wanted to make a difference and create a change. The prize money is not the key factor. It was meant to bring people together.”
“Once you have a passion for anything that you do, you will be successful. But once you put money first, you will be chasing money and it will be running away.”
He also advised other participants of the programme to stay committed, passionate and driven by value, stressing that there were many other routes to push their ideas to the market and the real winners are defined by the marketplace.
One of the winning teams is Fuel Intellisense, a project that will help fuel stations to get accurate data and avoid loss of revenue through syphoning underground fuel or stealing of fuel from different outlets. The project proposes to install a system that can be viewed remotely from anywhere, showing how much fuel was dispensed per day and what is left. The system will be installed on existing pumps and tanks.
Another project is Homefort Energy, which seeks to make cooking gas affordable and accessible to low-income families, whereby they can pay for gas using the pay as you go model. The initiative seeks to help millions of Nigerians, especially the rural poor to switch from using firewood or kerosene to cooking gas.
Another winning project is Gricd Mote and the proponents explained that it would provide cool shade transportation for temperature-sensitive items in the health sector and the oil and gas space and store them in correct conditions. The product will also provide monitoring for temperature humidity and locations of these items.
Kiakiais is another winning product and it seeks to get gas to the end-users while enabling them to know the quantity of gas left in their cylinders so that they don’t run out of gas in their homes. The system will also be used to order for gas and can be deployed by gas plant owners to manage sales in their plant.
The fifth project is Airsynq, a novel idea of balloon lifted satellite that uses helium to stay in flight up to about 2160 hours or about 90 days and having to come down for 24 hours routine maintenance. This technology can provide a year continuous area surveillance, with an artificial intelligence software that can help international oil companies and security teams monitor all the activities around areas where the balloon is deployed. The balloon goes through a routine of checking each image in real-time and then reports every activity that is happening with sensors that are able to pick out images from an altitude of about 3000 metres and with the balloon lifted satellite operating at about 3000 feet above the ground.
NOGTECH is the first-ever technology Hackathon in the Nigerian Oil and Gas industry and it was organized by the NCDMB in partnership with Learners Support Consultancy Company.
The General Manager, Capacity Building Division NCDMB, Mr Ama Ikuru explained that call for entries was made in June in seven thematic areas: health, asset security, tackling cyber threats, renewable energy, skills and talent management and supply chain. He said that a total of 630 entries were received at the close of submission in the third week of July.
The entries were subjected to two stages of review, first from internal NCDMB Judges and then from external judges, before the top 15 teams were selected for the three-day Hackathon.
He revealed that the board was also working on other projects in support of technology development and innovations in the Oil and Gas Industry. Some of the initiatives include the sponsorship of ENACTUS – Science and Technology Innovation Challenge; Establishment of modern Research & Development Centres of Excellence; Upgrade of Laboratories in Universities and Technical and Vocational Education and Training; Active participation in Technology Expos and NCDMB Research Product Development framework to help inventors attain market penetration.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
The reach of the Meta Business Agent is being expanded to Instagram and other platforms of the social media giant.
Meta Business Agent is an artificial intelligence (AI) that allows business owners to attend to customers’ needs with ease.
Customers expect instant responses, but no team can be everywhere at once. This innovation handles such without hassles.
It helps businesses to answer questions specific to the business, makes product recommendations from the catalogue, books appointments, qualifies incoming leads, and closes sales.
More than one million businesses are already using a Meta Business Agent on WhatsApp and Messenger to respond to customers around the clock.
“We’re now expanding our Business Agent to businesses big and small globally, so within minutes you can have yours up and running, responding in your customer’s local language using your tone,” Meta said in a statement.
“We’re also expanding these agents to Instagram since businesses connect with their customers there, too. Businesses can activate their Business Agent here. Getting started with the Business Agent is free. In the coming months, businesses will access the agent through our paid subscription offerings, with options for businesses of every size,” it added.
Meta also stated that it is making it simpler for people to discover businesses powered by a Meta Business Agent directly on WhatsApp. It noted that starting soon, people will be able to find businesses by typing their name in the Search bar, or by sharing their phone number or contact card in chats with friends and family. This way, when more customers reach out, they get a quick, helpful response.
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Lagos State government plans to expand the city’s data centre capacity to over 250 megawatts (MW) by 2030 as part of efforts to strengthen its digital infrastructure ecosystem.
This was disclosed by the state’s Commissioner for Innovation, Science, and Technology, Mr Olatubosun Alake, at the launch of the Kasi Cloud LOS1 data centre facility in Lekki. Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) invested in Kasi Cloud through an $8 million convertible loan note in 2021.
Mr Alake said Lagos already hosts nearly three-quarters of Nigeria’s commercial data centre capacity, adding that the government intends to expand its infrastructure footprint significantly over the next five years.
“There are about 146 additional megawatt data centres planned in the pipeline,” he said. “We envisage that by 2030, we would have over 250 megawatts of data centre capacity in Lagos, three times the current capacity growth.”
The expansion comes as demand for cloud services, AI computing power, and local data storage continues to grow across Nigeria’s digital economy, with Lagos at the forefront, housing thousands of businesses and startups.
Mr Alake said the Kasi Cloud facility represents Lagos’ entry into “large-scale hyperscale AI infrastructure,” signalling the state’s ambition to evolve beyond being known primarily as a startup hub into a major centre for digital infrastructure and AI computing.
“Lagos is no longer simply a startup city,” he said. “It is an infrastructure city.”
The Kasi LOS1 facility is designed as a 40MW hyperscale data centre campus, beginning operations with an initial 7.2MW IT load.
According to Mr Alake, the facility includes advanced GPU computing infrastructure powered by Nvidia H100 and H200 chips, alongside liquid cooling systems and cloud infrastructure services designed to support AI workloads.
The Lagos State government believes such infrastructure will become critical as AI adoption accelerates globally.
Mr Alake said the state is investing in fibre optic networks, smart city technologies, university innovation programmes, and digital government systems to prepare for the transition.
“The AI economy is going to require hundreds of megawatts,” he said. “The market has already made its decision about where digital infrastructure belongs.”
On his part, Mr Johnson Agbogun, co-founder and chief executive officer of Kasi Cloud, said the project was built to reduce Nigeria’s dependence on foreign cloud infrastructure and give African businesses more control over how their data and AI systems are developed.
“Nigerian enterprises are currently spending $850 million every year on foreign cloud infrastructure,” he said. “Every naira spent abroad on cloud and AI infrastructure helps build capabilities somewhere else.”
He added that the facility runs GPU-powered AI workloads from local enterprises and described the Lekki campus as “the beginning of Nigeria’s AI factory.”
“As artificial intelligence reshapes economies globally, the nations that control their own compute infrastructure and data will be the ones positioned to lead,” added Mr Kolawole Owodunni, NSIA’s Executive Director and Chief Information Officer.
The goal of Google Search has always been simple: to help you ask anything on your mind. Whether it is a quick fact to help with your daily hustle or a complex question about starting a new business, Nigerians rely on Search every single day.
Over the last year, Google has rapidly reimagined what Search can do with AI. The momentum has been incredible—just one year after its debut, AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users globally. As people have realised just how much more Search can do for them, they are searching more than ever before, reaching an all-time high in search queries last quarter. Today at Google I/O, Google shared the next step in its journey to bring together the best of a search engine with the best of AI.
To power this next chapter, Google is officially upgrading Search with Gemini 3.5 Flash as the new default model in AI Mode for everyone worldwide. Delivering sustained frontier performance for agents and coding, Gemini 3.5 Flash is the engine driving the new era of AI-powered Search. Because curiosity doesn’t always fit into standard keywords, this powerful AI model is transforming Search from a tool that simply finds information into an intelligent platform capable of reasoning, monitoring the web, and executing complex tasks on your behalf.
Here is a look at the four biggest AI-powered announcements coming to Google Search:
1. A Completely Reimagined Search Box
Google is introducing the biggest upgrade to its Search box in over 25 years. Now completely reimagined with AI, the new intelligent Search box dynamically expands to give you the space to describe exactly what you need. It goes beyond simple autocomplete by anticipating your intent and helping you phrase your questions. You are no longer limited to typing; you can now search using text, images, files, videos, or even Chrome tabs as inputs. Additionally, Google is making it easier to ask follow-up questions directly from an AI Overview, flowing naturally into a conversational back-and-forth where your context stays with you as you explore.
2. New Search Agents That Work in the Background
We are entering the era of Search agents, where you can create and manage multiple AI agents directly in Search. Google is launching “Information agents” that operate in the background 24/7. These agents intelligently scan the web—alongside fresh data on finance, shopping, and sports—to monitor for changes related to your specific questions. For example, if you are house hunting, your agent will continuously scan the market and notify you the moment a listing matches your exact criteria. Furthermore, Search is expanding its agentic booking capabilities; you can soon share specific criteria (like a late-night private karaoke room) and Search will pull the latest pricing and links to finish booking. For certain categories, Google can even call businesses on your behalf.
3. Custom Mini-Apps and Visuals Built Just for You
Search is no longer just returning links; it is now building the ideal response in the perfect format for your query entirely on the fly. By bringing the power of Google Antigravity and the agentic coding capabilities of Gemini 3.5 Flash into Search, users will get a custom “Generative UI.” This means Search can design custom layouts, interactive visuals, tables, graphs, or simulations in real-time. But it goes a step further: if you have an ongoing task, like establishing a new health routine, Search can actually code a custom fitness tracker or mini-app for you. These custom dashboards tap into real-time sources like live maps and weather, giving you a personalised tracker you can return to again and again.
4. Expanded Personal Intelligence Without a Subscription
For AI to be truly helpful, it shouldn’t just know the world’s information—it should understand your personal context, too. To achieve this, Google is expanding Personal Intelligence in AI Mode to more people in nearly 200 countries and territories across 98 languages. Crucially, this is being rolled out with no subscription required. Users can securely connect apps like Gmail, Google Photos, and soon Google Calendar directly to Search. Designed with transparency and choice at its heart, this allows you to safely ask Search to find information buried in your own personal files, always keeping you in complete control of your connected data.
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