" ITREALMS: Mark Zuckerberg in Nigeria, visits CCHub @Yaba

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Mark Zuckerberg in Nigeria, visits CCHub @Yaba

The chief executive officer of Facebook, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg commenced official visit to the commercial centre, Lagos in Nigeria on Tuesday with a stop-over at the Co-creation Hub in Yaba, reports ITRealms.

Zuckerberg’s presence in Nigeria, ITRealms gathered is on listen, learn and take ideas back to California on how Facebook could better support technology development and entrepreneurship across Africa.

Zuckerberg who is on his first-ever visit to Africa, met with some developers, partners, and explore Nollywood. He took the occasion to visit a 'Summer of Code Camp' at the Co-Creation Hub (CcHub) in Yaba.

ITRealms recalls that CcHub was opened in 2011 and at the time didn't even have an office. Five years later they fill three floors and the roof of a building, even at CcHub, people could learn how to code, developers could get help launching their first products, and find mentors and funding.

In addition, ITRealms reprots that Mark then visit Andela, an engineering organization that is building the next generation of technical leaders in Africa, set up earlier this year, by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative which invested in Andela after being impressed by the company's innovative model of learning and its drive to connect the global technology ecosystem with the most talented developers in Africa.

Andela is a business that recruits the most talented technologists in Africa and shapes them into world-class developers through a four-year technical leadership program. In the two years since it was founded, Andela has accepted just over 200 engineers from a pool of more than 40,000 applicants. Andela developers spend six months mastering a technical stack and contributing to open source projects before being placed with global technology companies as full-time, distributed teammates, working out of Andela headquarters in Lagos and Nairobi.

Director, Andela Lagos, Seni Sulyman said they are excited and honored to welcome Mark Zuckerberg to Lagos, stressing his visit reinforces not only support of Andela’s mission, but belief that indeed the next generation of great technology leaders will come out of Lagos, Nigeria and cities across Africa.

Andela, Sulyman said, has created a platform for passionate, driven software developers and engineers to break into the global tech ecosystem, but the barriers to entry are still very high, emphasizing that Mark’s visit demonstrates to all Nigerian developers and entrepreneurs that they’ve caught the attention of the tech world, and they are capable of succeeding on a truly global level.

At the end of the day Zuckerberg stopped by an Express WiFi stand in Lagos owned by Rosemary Njoku. Facebook's Express WiFi lets entrepreneurs like Rosemary set up a hot spot to help their community access apps and services built by local developers.

Nenye Dom/GEE


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Pix: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is visiting Nigeria this week on his first trip to Africa

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