Tension and excitement are building as eight outstanding schools from across Uganda gear up for the grand finale of the Stanbic National Schools Championship (NSC) 2025, known as the Battle of Champions. The event will take place on 29th August 2025 at Mestil Hotel in Kampala.
This year marks a decade of the competition, which has evolved into a vital platform for nurturing young entrepreneurs and innovators in the country.
The event, which culminates after a rigorous seven-month journey, has attracted over 500 students from more than 150 schools. These young innovators have developed solutions addressing real-world challenges in health, energy, and agriculture.
The finalists emerged after an intense boot camp held in May at Seroma Christian School in Mukono District, where over 90 schools were eliminated within the first three days.
“We entered the boot camp with 150 secondary schools in the Student Spark category (students currently in school) and 12 businesses from the Business Fellowship category comprising NSC Alumni. The competition saw eliminations from 150 to 90 schools, then down to 60, and by the end of the seventh day at the boot camp, only 16 schools remained. As of today, we have only two schools representing each region, making a total of eight schools qualifying for the grand finale,” said Cathy Adengo, Head of Sustainability at Stanbic Bank Uganda.
Among the finalists is St. Noah SSS Mawaggali, whose project WalkMate Smart Glasses aims to improve the mobility and independence of visually impaired individuals by combining smart glasses, a locator, and a smart cane into a comprehensive navigation system.
Other standout projects include:
Summayya High School’s UTI Detector, which helps identify urinary tract infections early.
Sacred Heart Secondary School – Mushanga (Western Uganda) with an automatic drinking water pumping system for institutions, prototyped in February 2025, with two units already sold to their school.
Ibanda Secondary School (Western Uganda) with scented insect-repellent candles made from coffee and cloves, targeting markets such as lodges and supermarkets.
St. Mary’s Girls Secondary School, Mandera (Eastern Uganda) with an innovative diabetes testing kit that allows flexible blood sugar monitoring.
Musana Vocational High School (Eastern Uganda) with an independent power source that does not require gasoline, solar, natural gas, or wind power to operate.
Comboni College, Lira (Northern Uganda) with a smoke-free electric generator designed to address power shortages in rural areas.
Mentor Secondary School (Northern Uganda) with an automated patient monitoring device used in healthcare settings to manage intravenous therapy.
Diana Ondoga, Head of Social Corporate Investment at Stanbic Bank, highlighted the importance of the competition in shaping the mindset of Uganda’s youth.
“The NSC aims to equip secondary and vocational school students with entrepreneurial and practical skills, fostering innovation and problem-solving,” she said.
She added that the Stanbic National Schools Championship has impacted over 500,000 students and ignited the birth of more than 200 businesses, contributing to the economic transformation of the country.
This initiative also aligns perfectly with Uganda’s National Curriculum, especially the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), which emphasizes skills, knowledge, values, and attitudes essential for real-world success.
As the grand finale approaches, Ondoga revealed that:
The winning school will receive a solar panel system worth UGX 20 million.
The runner-up will take home a water system worth UGX 10 million.
The two schools in third place will win scholastic materials.
Additionally, there is a commemorative prize of an all-expenses-paid trip to Johannesburg, South Africa, for two students and their teacher.
She concluded by noting that, given Stanbic Bank’s strategy focusing on Women, Youth, and Farmers (WYF), this project directly addresses the youth constituency by equipping them with practical skills to tackle the challenge of unemployment.