Lydia Adobea Dampare Addo is a Fall 2024 recipient of the Srinivasan Family Awards for Projects in Emerging Markets, an initiative run by the Center for Emerging Markets at Northeastern University to support student-led projects addressing critical challenges in emerging economies across the globe.
For Lydia Adobea Dampare Addo, Ghana is home, and the foundation of her passion for education, entrepreneurship, and youth development. Thanks to a Srinivasan Family Award through the Center for Emerging Markets, she has been able to transform this passion into action during her final semester at Northeastern to design a student innovation competition aimed at helping young people move their entrepreneurial ideas from concept to impact.
Throughout her journey in Northeastern's MBA program, Lydia has long been passionate about youth entrepreneurship and capacity building. Working in higher education for 3 years before pursuing her MBA, her interest in supporting innovation among students in Africa was shaped by her work with The Education Collaborative at Ashesi University in Ghana, where she saw firsthand the creativity and ambition of students and the emphasis on an entrepreneurial mindset beyond gaining employability skills.
With support from the Srinivasan Family Award and in collaboration with Obsessive Innovations, Lydia launched the Ideas to Industry Hackathon, a competition designed to help students develop and deploy real-world solutions in healthcare, education, and climate. She launched the project at her alma mater, Ashesi University, in collaboration with fellow alum Kelvin Degbotse, who leads an innovation hub at Obsessive Innovations. Together, they engaged Ashesi students through a cross-campus effort that involved the Career Services and Entrepreneurship Centre.
The hackathon was intentionally structured to bridge academia and industry, connecting student teams with mentors, early-stage funding, and, in some cases, direct partnerships with African startups. “We didn't just want to celebrate ideas,” Lydia reflected. “We wanted to see them tested, challenged, and brought to life in the real world. That's what this hackathon was built to do.”
The program officially launched in March 2025, receiving nineteen student group registrations. Seven teams were selected for the final round. Each was paired with experienced industry mentors, many of whom were Ashesi alumni, and given access to tools, training, and resources to help strengthen their projects. One of the program's key partners was Bisa, a Ghanaian telemedicine company that has partnered with several global organizations, including the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization.
The final Demo Day took place on 5th July 2025, with judges representing Northeastern University and Obsessive Innovations. These judges included Professor Ravi Ramamurti, Distinguished Professor of International Business and Director of the Center for Emerging Markets; Professor Lee Makowski, Professor of Bioengineering Chemistry and Chemical Biology; and Emmanuel Daniel-Aguebor, a management consultant advising Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit organizations in technology, business, and economic development.
The event's winning teams were LanSpeech (1st place), using AI to enhance speech therapy accessibility for individuals who stammer; Code Endelea (2nd place), creating a streamlined platform with an AI tutor to simplify coding education for both students and instructors; and Precision Agriculture (3rd place)' leveraging AI technology to optimize nutrient application in farming.
LanSpeech will be collaborating with Bisa to bring their solution to market. All three teams will also receive mentorship and use their cash prizes to develop working prototypes and advance their ideas toward industry implementation.
Looking ahead, Lydia hopes to run the hackathon annually. She is also working to embed the hackathon into Ashesi's broader innovation ecosystem, and expanding it to other institutions across Africa and other continents, making it a recurring platform for student-led, industry-supported innovation.
Reflecting on how the project has shaped her academic and professional journey, Lydia shares: “This experience has stretched every skill I've built in program design, mentorship, operations, marketing, and stakeholder engagement, and helped me see more clearly the kind of work I want to keep doing. I now see venture development and ecosystem building in emerging markets not just as areas of interest, but as areas where I can lead.”
With long-term partnerships forming, the Ideas to Industry Hackathon is already proving to be more than a one-time initiative-it's a glimpse into a broader movement for student-powered innovation in Africa and the world.
