Bayelsa Govt Partners Private Sector on IT Solutions

To promote the knowledge of Information Technology among young people in Bayelsa, the state government has partnered with the private sector in organising a hackathon, a tech event, where coders and programmers work in teams to provide solutions for problems using technology.

Speaking during the programme, Co-founder, iVillaSquare, Abiye Nyanabo, coordinator of the Yenagoa smart city hackathons, said the 24hour event was to help identify everyday problems that affect the state and provide easy, usable IT solutions.

He noted that, for instance, in the state’s health insurance programme, the participants drawn from Rivers, Bayelsa and Lagos would attempt to provide a USSD-based payment solution to allow people in remote villages key into it without the hassles of using a middleman.

“What this means is that you can use your phone, you can use any phone to register for health insurance the same way you would have done, if you are working in the civil service.

“It means that an old woman in Kaiama or any of these local government areas, can be part of the health insurance scheme by paying a premium through recharge cards or whatever it is and she can walk into any health facility and get solutions. That’s the accessible health insurance we talk about,” he said.

He added that during the event, the participants created a platform that brings together farmers and traders in all the markets in the state just by using a device that would give them the average price of goods in all the markets.

“Three, we are talking about modern schools in Bayelsa. When you have five modern schools, in different local governments, how do you know for instance the ratio at every point in time of boys to girls.

“How does the commissioner, sit in his office without reports coming in manually to know whether people are dropping out and the tuition rate in the school. How does he know standards for instance. We are doing school feeding programmes, whether the feeding programme, is running the way it should on a daily basis.