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