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Solve IT 2019 in Gonder is complete and here are the top 3 winners:

The first place winners invented a very timely application that can be used to prevent cheating during exams. This past week Ethiopia stopped text message services and internet access nationwide to deter students from cheating on the national exams. Three high school students, Michale G.Hiwote, Eyob Awoke and their team leader, Bisrat Wuletaw created a phone detector application. Bisrat explained the need for their app saying, "We all know that nowadays cheating by sending out mass texts to students is one of the biggest problems within the education sector. So we are tackling this problem by developing a system that can identify the main phone number that is sending the texts and then reporting it to the appropriate administration personnel".

In second place, we have SOLAR COVER - this team created mobile phone cases made from solar panels so that people can charge their phones using sunlight. The team was entirely composed of high school students: Mikiyas Kiros, Adam Tefera. Getachew Shibabaw, Fasil Yeneakal and Melkamu Atalel. The team leader stated their project would make it so that people would no longer have to carry around power banks and chargers.

In third place is a mobile app called MARK IT. Teachers can use their phone cameras to scan exam papers into the app, which will then mark the correct and incorrect answers. The all-male team of high school students said they wanted to reduce the time that teachers spent marking exam papers and wanted to create an efficient device that would save the teachers time, as well as the time students had to spend waiting for results. This team included Hamdu Anwar, Alazar Newayneh, Assier Anteneh, Daniel Sissay and Rediet Getachew.

JICA would like to say thank you to our partners, the US Embassy and iCog Labs, as well as to Gonder University for hosting all the training sessions and the regional competition.

#JICAinAfrica #USInvestsinEthiopians #iCogLabs #SolveIT2019.

First place winners.