Nigerian student wins grand prize in Microsoft Competition

Saviour Okusenogu, 17, from Lagos, became one of this year's grand prize winners at the 2015 YouthSpark Challenge for Channge. 10 grand-prize winners were announced in the global contest that helps young people to turn the causes close to their hearts into tangible ways to do good in the world.

He wants to develop a project to spark an interest in science and engineering for kids in developing countries. He plans to bring fun and interactive science experiments and other projects to secondary schools with hope that they will get kids far more excited than the abstract, conceptual ways many kids learn about those topics.

“It’s a very great opportunity for students like me, and for people who want to change their communities with science and technology,” he said.

This year’s winners created compelling solutions to help their community spanning a variety of social issues including education, computer science and digital literacy. See full list of winners here.

As one of the prizes is a trip to Nicaragua, the winners of will soon travel there to learn about social entrepreneurship and development issues.

Other prizes are a $2,500 cash grant, and a Microsoft technology bundle (Surface Pro3, Windows Phone, and Office 365) to help them develop their projects further.