Meet Charlette N'Guessan, the First Female to Win £25,000 UK Engineering Prize

26-year-old Charlette N’Guessan from Ivory Coast has become the first-ever woman to clinch the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation. The award, sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering in London, UK, recognizes outstanding innovations and offers a substantial prize of £25,000 to deserving scientists and engineers each year.

Okoro David Emeka Okoro David Emeka
Nov 15, 2023 - 22:03 Updated: Nov 15, 2023 - 22:18
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Meet Charlette N'Guessan, the First Female to Win £25,000 UK Engineering Prize

In a groundbreaking achievement, Charlette N’Guessan from Ivory Coast has made history by becoming the first-ever woman to clinch the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation. The award, sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering in London, UK, recognizes outstanding innovations and offers a substantial prize of £25,000 to deserving scientists and engineers each year.

N’Guessan, along with her team, secured the 2020 award for their innovative creation, the BACE API—a digital verification system that employs Artificial Intelligence and facial recognition to remotely and instantly verify the identities of Africans.

Innovation Details:

Explaining the functionality of the system, N’Guessan detailed that the BACE API operates by matching a live photo of a user with the image on their official documents, such as passports or ID cards.

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“For the person trying to submit their application, we ask them to switch on their camera to make sure the person behind the camera is real, and not a robot. We are able to capture the face of the person live and match their image with the one on the existing document the person submitted,” she explained.

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Recognition and Support:

According to a statement by the Royal Academy of Engineering, both the Africa Prize judges and a live audience voted in favor of Charlette N’Guessan’s groundbreaking innovation.

Rebecca Enonchong, an entrepreneur from Cameroon and Africa Prize judge, expressed pride in N’Guessan's achievement, stating, “We are very proud to have Charlette N’Guessan and her team win this award. It is essential to have technologies like facial recognition based on African communities, and we are confident their innovative technology will have far-reaching benefits for the continent.”

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Inspiration and Development:

In an interview with CNN, N’Guessan revealed that the inspiration to develop BACE API arose during her studies at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in Accra, Ghana, West Africa.

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“We … talked to tech entrepreneurs. That’s when we noticed that there is a huge problem with cybersecurity with online services and businesses,” she explained. “We decided to make our contribution as software engineers and data scientists by building a solution that can be useful for this market,” N’Guessan added.