Balikis Soliudeen one of the winners of the Collier Award winners

Published 3:57 pm Thursday, May 14, 2026

Balikis Soliudeen was one of the five Collier Award winners, which was established by Carollyne and Bob Collier at Olds College of Agriculture & Technology. The mission was to help drive student success by rewarding excellence in the labour behind students’ various projects.

“I feel motivated and very encouraged because ever since I won the award, I have been more motivated to get into the world of innovation. Not only that, I feel very obliged to improve my critical thinking and analytical skills because it’s a big source of motivation for me…” said Soliudeen, an agricultural management student.

She won her award after developing her project around precision agriculture.

“It’s an AI-driven multi-spectral vision system. It’s multi-spectra because it is a convergence of different technological tools in one camera system.”

Her idea is to monitor the animals and analyze them, reporting swiftly in real time to the farmers.

“So, helping the farmers to understand the physical, physiological and psychological changes in their animals,” said Soliudeen.

The cameras monitor the animals’ movement, as well as the intruders who come onto the farm.

“So my idea is to improve on an already existing idea. How can we make it better?”

The project, so far, is just an idea and has not yet been actualized, although she hopes it will become something farmers use in the future.

From the Fulani tribe from Nigeria, Soliudeen was born into a family of farmers from generation to generation.

“My tribes people, we are known all over Central Africa for cattle herding and pastural grazing of cattle,” she said, adding that they grazed in open field, moving the cattle from one different part of Africa to another.

She added that she grew up in the business of livestock, and said that it is cultural and economic for them.

After graduating from university in 2018, she earned a Bachelor of Accounting and worked for years at a real estate development company.

“While the company was busy building houses for investors, at some point they realized that they were going to venture into (the) business of agriculture as an additional product.”

She added that they were selling a thousand acres of plot of land just for farming purposes not for building.

Along the way, she found herself helping and working with the business development team, which brought her background experience of being a Fulani girl.

After coming to Canada in 2025, the big difference was definitely the cultural shock but one thing that amazed her is how cattle farming is done here and the idea of ranching.

“What we do back home is traditional, like moving cattle from one community to another to feed them,” she said.

Aside from just the idea of ranching, Soliudeen said she also what is different here than back home is the issue of labour shortages in Canada from her research.

“So, this camera will help them improve on productivity and profitability.”

In 2024, Soliudeen was still working at her previous place of employment, and those experiences motivated her to go back to school to study agriculture and management, mostly to have international experience and exposure.

“Basically, how farming can be done in a modern way,” she said of her goal.

She came across Olds College when moving to Alberta, and began there in September of 2025.

She will finish up at Olds College in 2027, and hopes to stay in Canada for a bit to work in sales and marketing of agricultural tools or products and consulting.

When she returns to Nigeria, she said she hopes to adopt the idea of ranching, as she sees the stress her family and cattle people go through in Nigeria

“I would also like to get some affordable technology here in Canada to better improve my family farm to make things faster, easier and make the effort count.”

She said she’s happy with her choice of attending Olds College and has had a wonderful experience.