The Women in WACREN-Nigeria Hackfest 2019 took place from 18 – 22 November 2019. 30 women from 18 institutions embarked in an intensive 5 days of brainstorming and research to build prototype Data logging IoT weather stations and using IoT cloud platforms to collect, visualize and analyze the different weather elements of temperature, humidity, pressure, wind direction, wind speed, and rain gauge.

Following a courtesy visit to the Vice-Chancellor and management team of Covenant University the hosting institution of the hackfest, the event formally started with opening remarks from Owen Iyoha (MD Eko-Konnect) and good wishes from Omo Oaiya (WACREN CSO) who joined the opening ceremony remotely. Kafayat Adeoye the event coordinator introduced the participants to the project (Data logging IoT weather station) to begin the hands-on hackfest.

On the final day after 5 days of intense research, Python coding and configurations of various components of the weather stations, each of the 3 groups formed during the hackfest made presentations on possible use cases for the weather stations and ways to utilise the data collected from their IoT weather monitoring systems in areas such as flood forecasting and agriculture.
The management of Covenant University led by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Director of ICT and HODs of computer science and engineering departments visited the venue of the hackfest on the final day where each grouped demonstrated their working weather station prototypes.

In his remarks during the closing ceremony, Owen Iyoha stated that one of the goals of the hackfest was to build a network of weather stations leveraging the research and education network infrastructure, higher education institutions, the women in wacren – Nigeria community, other Eko-Konnect community stakeholders and industry partners to expand and improve on weather data collection in Nigeria and improve related research, projects and use cases for weather monitoring and forecasting.

The 5-day hackfest concluded at CURID Auditorium Covenant University with the “Eko-Konnect ‘Women in the community’ Day session geared at mentoring the participants to develop themselves and take up careers become entrepreneurs in STEM and technology sectors. The session saw presentations from invited guest speaker Mrs Jane Egerton-Idehen, founder of Women and Career and Country Manager of Avanti Satellite Communications. Dr Joke Badejo Senior Lecturer at Covenant University also spoke about what women needed to do to be achievers in their careers using her own academic career as an example.