The American University of Nigeria (AUN) has advanced to the regional finals of the sixth annual Hult Prize, whose winners will receive $1,000,000 in startup funding. This year there were more than 4,000 applications from among which the AUN team of Hafsat Adamu, Blessing Douglas, and Lucy Okonkwo was offered a place to compete. AUN’s team was the only one from Nigeria to advance to the Dubai stage of the competition.

“Part of what qualified us, said AUN President Margee Ensign, “is our university’s development mission and commitment to fostering development in our region and the continent, together with the students’ strong, longstanding record of academic excellence and community engagement.”

An instructor in business & entrepreneurship, Fardeen Dodo, who coached last year’s team, said the competition would enrich the students’ college experience. “Besides the competition, students will benefit from several workshops, networking, and entrepreneurial learning events run by a number of professionals and trail-blazing global experts, including Stuart Fleming of Enviroserve, Garett Awad of the Scholl Centre of Entrepreneurship, Ali Edrissi of JP Morgan (UK), and Khaled Gazawi, the CEO of Grameen-Jameel.”

Dodo described the competition as a “demonstration of how far our students are ready to go, to action up our vision of development and commitment to addressing the longstanding social challenges that confront Nigeria and Africa at large.”

In partnership with President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative, the innovative program aims to solve the planet’s most pressing challenges. Student teams compete in six cities around the world for a chance to secure the $1 million prize money meant to launch a sustainable social venture.

The 2015 Hult Prize will focus on building start-ups that provide sustainable, high quality, and early education solutions to 10 million children under the age of six in urban slums and beyond by 2020. This year’s challenge was selected and set by President Bill Clinton, who said, “The Hult Prize is about more than the solution to the problem; it’s about how the world has to work in the 21st century.”

Ahmad Ashkar, CEO and founder of the Hult Prize Foundation commented: “Servicing the world’s poorest through profitable and sustainable enterprise is not just good for the world, it’s great business. Our pioneering platform builds ecosystems by leveraging crowd and we couldn’t be happier that the American University of Nigeria will be joining our mission with their participation in the 6th annual Hult Prize.”

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