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By Chinenye Anuforo
The need to expose young Nigerians to coding-related programmes, languages and games was once again emphasized as more than 800 young minds who participated in this year’s Science Technology, Engineering Mathematics (STEM) Bootcamp for Kids (SB4Kids) gathered for the closing ceremony.
Director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, while delivering a keynote address at the event, congratulated the participants for completing the 10-day bootcamp, which held in Abuja, Lagos and Kano simultaneously, and encouraged them to start early in deepening their interest in different areas of information technology (IT) and emerging technologies.
Inuwa emphasized that, “Seven out of the ten fastest growing and better paying jobs globally are in the Information Technology (I.T) sector; So, I need you all to seize this golden opportunity to start coding early in life, because you need to become an exceptional person by having initiatives that can solve problems.”
“We want to see games with African characters, games that uphold and promote our indigenous culture and values as well as educational games and many more”, Inuwa maintained.
The DG stressed that the country is working assiduously towards bridging the global talent gap by becoming the supplier of same.
“We have an ambitious target of making Nigeria a talent global supplier. We have launched some initiatives like training one million tech developers in the next 18 months and the talent gab analysis where we want to get the best line of information about the number of talents we have in the country. Then, we will come up with a National Talent Strategy Plan on how to position Nigeria as a global talent supplier”, he added.
He noted that the Agency is also doubling efforts to ensure that training interns at the the National Centre for Artificial intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR) come up with solutions on malaria and diabetics as well as other health related issues, adding that some of them are learning to apply drone tech to improve Agriculture and Security.
According to Inuwa, catching them young and spurring kids to make use of the computer which has become a liberal act will translate to building a career in money-making digital ventures, thereby including them in Nation Building.
