Mark Zuckerberg in Nigeria, visits CCHub @Yaba

ITRealms:

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

ITREALMS ... everything news digitally!
Pix: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is visiting Nigeria this week on his first trip to Africa

Nigerian developers embracing SkillsMix outsourcing portal - Adesoga

ITRealms

Developers of Information Technology (IT) projects, especially web-based in Nigeria have began to embrace the SkillsMix outsourcing portal for their executions, says the Managing Director/chief executive officer, Thought Studio, Samuel Adesoga, at the Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB) in Lagos, Tuesday, during a chat.

He also said that the developers expressed their support for the platform, stressing that CcHub is Nigeria’s first open living lab and pre-incubation space designed as a multi-functional, multi-purpose space where work to catalyze creative social technology ventures take place.

ITRealms recalls that the hub is a place for technologists, social entrepreneurs, government, tech companies, impact investors and hackers in and around Lagos to co-create new solutions to the many social problems in Nigeria and the world at large.

Mr. Adesoga pointed out that local project owners who seek skillful professionals to execute and fulfill their projects need not worry any more as SkillsMix is open to all freelance web designers, web developers, marketers and writers who require avenue to express their prowess. 

Equally, he said that the outsourcing and crowd-sourcing site was designed specifically for project owners seeking how to effectively execute their projects, which could be a web design or similar projects on time and on budget.

“The project owners can outsource the projects to freelancers in order to save costs” he said, underscoring the fact that SkillsMix portal would source the right freelance designers, developers, writers among others from across the nation on behalf of the project owners.

He, therefore, urged local IT developers who are mindful of earning additional incomes to register on the site, as registration on the SkillsMix site is free. Some categories of job listed on the site include logo design, graphic design, basic web design, e-commerce, blogs, content management systems, mobile apps, social networks, database, search engine optimization, web apps and software, writing and marketing.

Explaining how SkillsMix works to ITRaelms, Adesoga said that project owners are required to post their projects and project specification on the website, thus enabling registered freelancers and skilled workers to locate these projects and join the project's discussion online.

“SkillsMix’s objective is to deepen the growing information communications technology industry in Nigeria” he declared.

According to him, SkillMix is designed such that each project has its own discussion forum where freelancers would raise questions concerning the project under scrutiny. The freelancers would convince the project owner about their skills and experiences as well as qualifications to execute the projects. Each skilled worker/freelancer has a profile page that exhibits the communication skills, work ethic, technical skills, reviews from past projects to name a few.

By Chuks Egbuna:

ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D