Enyata announces the 50 winners from Project Buildup

Enyata announces 50 winners to win MacBook and free Pluralsight subscription from its Project Buildup initiative.

Enyata's Project Buildup aims to equip 10,000 African techies with the resources to grow in the tech industry over the next five years.

The first stage of Project Buildup has come to a close with 50 winners selected. All winners get a free MacBook and access to a six-month free Pluralsight subscription to learn as much as they want. The winners were chosen along both engineering and product tracks.

The Project Buildup initiative was launched about a month ago and had over 5,000 applicants.

Whittling down

The applicants were put through an IQ test with a cut-off mark of 34 out of 50 (‌‌68%). Only about 40% of the applicants (2,000+) made it passed the IQ test.

Thereafter, aptitude tests were rolled out for both tracks (engineering and product) to further identify the most deserving candidates. Only 400 applicants completed the aptitude tests of which 150 moved on to the final stage with a score of 52 out of 70 (74.2%) or above.

In a bid to promote a 'merit-based', human-led process to pick the most deserving, Enyata also considered the motivation story and Github activities of the applicants over the last six months. Applicants who have been actively learning, documenting their progress and making huge leaps were keenly considered.

Of the 50 winners, 60% were picked on the engineering track while 40% were on the product track. The Engineering track includes Front-end Development, Back-end Development, Data Science/Engineering and Mobile Development. While the Product track includes Product Designer, Data Analytics, Product Manager.

Despite a male-dominated application 81% (of 5,000), women made up 58% ‌‌(of 50) of the eventual winners. Enyata says this is because there received higher quality applications from females than their male counterparts. This trend, Enyata says, mirrors improvement in adoption of tech from more females at the beginner level. Although, there was a 50:50 split for the Engineering track, as women made up 75% of the Product track awardees.

Of the 50 winners, 24 (48%) are based in Lagos while 5 (10%) reside in Ondo state. Abuja and Oyo follow closely with 4 winning participants each while Osun, Edo and Ogun had 2 winners per state. Abia, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Delta, Enugu, Kwara and Niger states also have one winner each totalling 14 states that were represented.

List of Winners

For the Product Track, here are the list of winners:

For the Engineering Track, here are the list of winners:

Winners should expect to receive an email detailing how they can receive their prize. However, those resident in Lagos can be called in immediately to receive their prize at Enyata's office.

The company is currently working with Consonance to create structures to support the growth of the winners and applicants. Other techies who missed out on this first phase can keep an eye on Enyata's social media for further rollouts.