Women are rising up against the odds and trashing sexism, prejudice and discrimination to boldly take their place as game changers in today’s world.
Joining the leagues of trailblazers in the tech world, Ivory Coast’s Charlette N’Guessan has proudly written her name in history by winning the 2020 Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation.
She becomes the first woman to win the award. Charlette, CEO and co-founder of BACE API, and her team won the £25,000 award (about $33,000) for BACE API, a digital verification system that uses Artificial Intelligence and facial recognition to verify identities, helping boost cyber security and help curb identity fraud on the continent.
BACE API works by matching the live photo of a user to the image on their documents such as passports or ID card, N’Guessan said.
For websites and online applications that have BACE API integrated in them, users will be verified via their webcam to establish their identity, CNN reports.
“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.
BACE API, a facial recognition tech designed to identify African faces can be integrated into already existing applications and systems for identity verification and is targeted at mostly financial institutions on the continent, N’Guessan told CNN.
N’Guessan and her team won the Africa Prize for Innovation founded and supported by the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering and reputed to be Africa’s biggest award celebrating innovation
The virtual award ceremony held on September 3.
The Royal Academy of Engineering said in a statement
“We are very proud to have Charlette N’Guessan and her team win this award,” said Rebecca Enonchong, an entrepreneur from Cameroon entrepreneur and Africa Prize judge in the statement.
“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.”
