AURRA KAWANZARUWA
Earlier this month a group of school girls from Nigeria traveled to San Francisco and went on to win the Technovation Challenge 2018 with an app they have developed called FD-Detector.
Its function? Simple. It helps users identify fake medicines using a drug’s barcode to verify its authenticity and expiration date.
The girls used opensource software from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build the mobile app. Why is this a big deal? The teens had very little tech knowledge and a painful personal experience driving their innovation.
Five months ago, 15 year old team leader Jessica Osita had never used a computer before or used the internet. But when her brother died after fake drugs were administered to him following an accident, she was determined to contribute to the solution.
Named Team Save-A-Soul – Promise Nnalue, Jessica Osita, Nwabuaku Ossai, Adaeze Onuigbo and Vivian Okoye -spent five months researching and building the app and hope it can be a solution to the widespread sale of counterfeit drugs in Nigeria.
Watch the video to learn more about the app and their journey.
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