MTN Nigeria PachiPanda Challenge 3.0 ended on Friday, October 23, 2026, with the announcement of its national winners at a ceremony held at the MTN Rooftop Event Centre, Falomo, Ikoyi, Lagos. Olateju Emmanuel Olamide emerged as the overall winner, ahead of first runner-up James Thomas Terhemba and second runner-up Oluwadunsin Temilola Bolaji, following a final pitch session involving ten finalists from across the country.
The winners emerged from a Top 10 that had completed a four-day intensive bootcamp, including masterclasses at the UNDP Innovation Centre and a Demo Pitch & Feedback at Deloitte Nigeria, before presenting their solutions to a panel of judges on Thursday, October 22. Their solutions spanned the challenge’s focus areas of pollution, climate change, climate-smart cities and urban resilience, and community conservation.
The PachiPanda Challenge, MTN Nigeria’s Sustainability and Shared Value youth innovation platform, is delivered in partnership with the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Nigeria and Deloitte Nigeria. It empowers young Nigerians to design innovative, sustainable solutions to pressing environmental challenges.
Speaking at the ceremony, MTN Nigeria’s Chief Corporate Services and Sustainability Officer, Tobechukwu Okigbo, congratulated the winners and urged all the finalists to sustain their drive. “Whether you win or not is irrelevant today. What is relevant is the spirit that pushed you to come here must not be allowed to die. You must keep striving. You must keep trying to solve problems.” He said.
Also speaking, Community Manager and Pipeline Coordinator at UNDP, Aisha Usman, commended the ingenuity of the young innovators. “You are not waiting to be saved; you are doing the saving. You are not waiting for the government to solve all the problems. You are going into the front lines and solving some of Nigeria’s most challenging problems,” she said, adding that initiatives like PachiPanda provide the enabling environment innovators need to scale.
Season 3.0 introduced new features designed to help participants succeed, including a Top 25 vetting stage introduced to mark MTN’s 25th anniversary, and a dedicated dry-run pitch day where industry experts gave finalists direct feedback ahead of the final judging.
The national winners will go on to represent Nigeria at the Africa Finale in South Africa, where they will compete alongside winners from other countries in Africa markets.
Speaking after the announcement, Olateju, founder of LumiCare, a product designed to screen for jaundice in infants, emphasised that the innovation would save the lives of millions of babies across Nigeria and the wider continent, expressing immense excitement as he prepares to represent the country on the continental stage in South Africa.