The integrated payment and digital commerce company, Interswitch group, has reaffirmed commitment to promoting and supporting the study of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) related subjects among secondary school students in Africa.
To this end, the company has announced not only the commencement of its National Science Competition for this year but also increased the pool prize money to be won this year from N14 million to N30 million.
The executive vice president, Group Marketing and Corporate Communications of the company, Cherry Eromosele, made the announcement in a statement made available to newsmen in Lagos.
She emphasised that the sole objective of the contest is to reward academic excellence, encourage healthy competition and raise more professionals among young students in STEM- related fields in Africa.
According to her, the free and voluntary competition, known as Interswitch Spark, is part of Interswitch corporate social responsibilities on education to the country.
She explained that the annual competition with this year’s sixth edition in Nigeria and fifth in Kenya, is in various stages with contestants taken through qualifying online assessment rounds and national examination and then semi and grand finale stages.
She said the grand prize winner will be rewarded with N15 million (instead of N7.5 million of last year), in scholarships for a five-year period, a laptop and monthly stipends while the first and second runners-up would receive N10 million (instead of N4 million) scholarships for three years, a laptop and monthly stipends and N5 million (instead of N1 million) in scholarships for one year, monthly stipends and a laptop, respectively.
She added that participants who take the fourth to ninth positions and all the 18 semi -finalists as well as 27 outstanding teachers will also be rewarded with cash gift for their efforts this year.
Similarly, Interswitch will also buy the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB)’s e-PINS for the top 200 preliminary qualifiers to enable them to participate in the next year Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examination (UTME).
Eromosele said the idea of giving various gifts is to expand reward for hardwork and encourage more participation especially among students from the less privileged homes.
She declared that Interswitch is more encouraged to invest more in the completion because of the huge impacts the previous editions had made on STEM education in both Nigeria and Kenya.
She urged all the eligible students and their schools to visit the company dedicated website for further information and registration.
