Charlette N’Guessan, a remarkable 26-year-old from the Ivory Coast, is the first woman to receive the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Award for Engineering Innovation.
The Royal Academy of Engineering in London, UK, sponsors the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation annually awards $25,000 to scientists and engineers who have made remarkable breakthroughs.
However, Charlette N’Guessan and her team won 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 African identities.
N’Guessan described how the technology functions by comparing a user’s live photo to the picture on their device.
N’Guessan explained 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.
We ask applicants to turn on their cameras to ensure that the person in front of the lens is real and not a robot before submitting their applications. She said we could record a person’s face in real-time and compare it to the image on the previously provided document.
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.
