26-year-old African Lady wins £25000 UK Engineering prize, becomes first-ever woman to win the award

Charlette N’Guessan, a remarkable 26-year-old lady from the Ivory Coast, is the first woman to receive the Africa Award for Engineering Innovation from the Royal Academy of Engineering.

The Royal Academy of Engineering in London, UK, sponsors the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, which annually awards $25,000 to scientists and engineers who have made remarkable breakthroughs.

But, Charlette N’Guessan and her team took home the 2020 prize for creating the BACE API system, a digital verification system that employs facial recognition and artificial intelligence to remotely and instantly confirm the identities of Africans.

N’Guessan gave a detailed explanation of the system’s operation, stating that the BACE API compares a user’s live photo to the photo on their official documents, such as their passport or identification card.

“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.

The Royal Academy of Engineering reported that the judges for the Africa Award and a live audience chose Charlette N’Guessan’s invention as the winner.

“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,” said Rebecca Enonchong, an entrepreneur from Cameroon and Africa Prize judge in the statement.

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