Bridge Africa Technologies is pleased to announce the selection of Mr. Chikaome Chimara Imediegwu as one of the Judges for the BAT Hackathon 2023. Each year, the hackathon brings together ambitious innovators who are ready to build practical solutions for Africa’s fast-evolving technology and financial ecosystem. The event has become a proving ground for ideas that aim to improve digital services, strengthen financial inclusion, and shape the future of business on the continent. Welcoming a professional with Mr. Imediegwu’s background signals a renewed commitment to raising the quality of evaluation and mentorship offered to participating teams.
His career reflects a steady rise built on real sector experience, analytical thinking, and consistent engagement with financial data. Long before stepping into mainstream banking, he worked directly with micro and small business clients, where he gained firsthand exposure to the challenges that small enterprises face in adopting financial tools. His early work at AB Microfinance Bank involved delivering POS and mobile banking products to business owners who depended on these solutions to keep their daily operations running. He supported digital onboarding, conducted outreach to improve transaction volumes, and produced usage reports that guided early revenue and product decisions. These experiences shaped his practical understanding of how digital financial services work when placed in the hands of everyday users.
He later transitioned into full-scale banking and business development at Access Bank, one of Nigeria’s largest financial institutions. This phase of his career broadened his exposure to credit, customer relationship management, channel growth, and revenue expansion. Managing a portfolio that exceeded five million dollars required a balance of risk awareness, strategy, and relationship depth. He designed custom financial solutions for clients and worked with cross-functional teams to align products with market needs. His involvement in CRM based sales pipelines helped boost customer engagement, while his collaboration with IT and finance teams contributed to enhancements across POS and mobile banking platforms. These improvements supported stronger adoption, streamlined customer journeys, and opened new digital opportunities for the bank’s retail and SME clients.
Alongside frontline work, he developed a growing interest in analytics, reporting, and process optimization. He contributed to research on predictive analytics, customer retention, behavioral segmentation, and data-driven resource allocation. Many of his publications focused on how financial institutions can simplify processes, reduce operational redundancy, and use business intelligence tools to make better decisions. This shift into analytics later shaped his graduate studies in business analytics and strengthened his ability to move between business strategy and data interpretation.
This combination of field experience, relationship management, data knowledge, and operational awareness makes him an ideal fit for the BAT Hackathon 2023 judging panel. His contributions will cut across three core areas that define this year’s evaluation structure.
The first area is Financial Innovation and Digital Banking Solutions. His hands-on work with mobile banking, cards, POS platforms, and customer-driven digital channels provides the insight needed to assess ideas that aim to improve access to financial services. He has seen how users behave, how adoption grows, and how digital products succeed or fail when placed in real market conditions. This allows him to quickly recognize solutions that can reduce friction, expand reach, or improve service delivery across different customer groups. His input will help teams refine their concepts in ways that align with genuine user needs.
The second area is Business Strategy and Growth Execution. His background in portfolio management, business development, and customer analytics gives him a strong foundation for evaluating the strategic soundness of proposed solutions. He understands what sustainable growth looks like, how to identify market value, and how to determine whether a project is ready to scale. His approach is practical and grounded. He looks at the strength of the idea, the clarity of the execution plan, the strength of the customer value proposition, and the team’s capacity to move from concept to measurable impact. For a hackathon that values real-world applicability, this perspective is essential.
The third area is Data Driven Decision Making and Process Improvement. His career has consistently involved using data to drive operational improvements and strategic choices. From building dashboards to tracking performance, to conducting root cause analysis, to modeling customer behavior, he has worked with data in both structured and practical environments. This experience prepares him to evaluate solutions that depend on analytics, automation, or predictive insights. He understands the difference between data that is interesting and data that is actionable. He also knows how institutions turn analytical output into policy changes, new workflows, and better customer engagement.
Across all three categories, his value comes from the fact that he understands both the operational realities and the strategic mindset required in the financial services landscape. He has worked directly with customers, managers, analysts, and product designers. He has observed financial systems from the inside, while also exploring their improvement through research and analytics. This positions him as a bridge between practice and innovation, which is the balance every hackathon team needs when refining their ideas into viable solutions.
His presence on the BAT Hackathon 2023 judging panel strengthens the event’s commitment to rigorous evaluation, meaningful mentorship, and a clear focus on impact. Teams will benefit from feedback that is grounded in experience, supported by data awareness, and informed by a broad understanding of how financial channels operate at different levels. His input is expected to help participants sharpen their product logic, refine their business strategy, and position their solutions for long-term relevance.
As the hackathon opens its call for participation, innovators, startups, students, and professionals across Africa are encouraged to submit their concepts. This year’s projects have the potential to influence the future of digital banking, financial inclusion, and technology enabled business models. With judges like Mr. Chikaome Chimara Imediegwu on the panel, participants can expect a fair, thoughtful, and insightful review process that respects creative effort while challenging teams to aim higher.
Bridge Africa Technologies looks forward to a competitive, engaging, and transformative edition of the BAT Hackathon 2023. The ideas presented this year will not only compete for recognition, they may also play a part in shaping the next chapter of financial innovation across the continent.