Nigerian Students Win Awards at South African Science Fair

It was a good day for the young Nigerians at the Birchwood Hotel and Conference centre in Boksburg, Johannesburg, South Africa where Nigerian secondary school students drawn from Rivers, Benue and Akwa Ibom held their own and shone like a million stars at the Eskom Expo for Young scientists.

Competing with over 600 projects by students from South Africa and other African countries, the Nigerian kids won 4 awards. Intel, the globally renowned technology company sponsored the students to South Africa as part of its efforts to improve interest in science education and technology.

Calvary Arrows secondary School, Gboko won a special award for innovation and novelty in Engineering. This school located in a rural community developed a multi-powered lawn mower that can be powered by electricity, batteries or solar energy. They smiled home with 2 thousand Rand prize money. This is aside another silver medal in the mechanical, aeronautic and Industrial Engineering category. Niger Delta Science college Port Harcourt won a bronze medal for their investigation on an automatic multi-phase selector with a generating plant while Community Secondary School Aka Ufot in Akwa Ibom state won another bronze medal for their work in producing plastic materials from simple cassava extracts. Who says there is no hope for our dear country?

Corporate Affairs manager of Intel, Osagie Ogunbor said the success of the students validate the relentless nature of the Nigerian spirit in the face of daunting infrastructural challenges especially in the Educational sector. He said the students had done Intel Nigeria proud for its investment not only in sponsoring them to the fair but also organizing the annual National science fair for all secondary school students in partnership with Shell Petroleum Development Company.

The Eskom Expo for young scientists is over 30 years old and it is by far the biggest science fair for secondary schools in South Africa. It may also interest you to know that Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), which holds annually in the United States is the biggest in the world.