Microsoft Trains 400 Nigerian Youth at UNILAG, Co-Creation Hub

Microsoft recently kicked off a series of developer camps across the country to support the growth of a vibrant developers community in Nigeria. 

Participants registered at no cost and had the opportunity to network and learn from experts, and receive hands-on time to practically apply what they have learnt to an IT problem.

Microsoft Dev. Camps are regularly held in different countries across the globe, and in Africa they are an important part of Microsoft’s drive to accelerate technology growth by providing young developers with tools to excel in the digital environment.

In Nigeria, the training was impacted by a team of developer evangelists flown in from Microsoft West, East and Central Africa to share their expertise on Windows 8, Windows Phone, Windows Azure and Visual Studio Platforms amongst others with the participants.

During the programme held in at the University of Lagos (Unilag) and Co-creation Hub, respectively, over 400 Nigerian youths were trained.

Omar Islam, DPE, Kinect and Gaming, Microsoft 4Afrika took participants on a journey through the Microsoft Kinect solutions where he focused on Kinect as an interactive hardware solution from the stable of Microsoft directed at gamers and the developers out there (who might be more into playing games than writing a Blog).

Other faculties included Shehab Fawzy (Developer Evangelist Windows 8), Dina Helmy (Developer Evangelist Windows Phone), Ahmed Sabbour (Developer Windows Azure), Melisa Ncube (Developer Evangelist Open Source), Stephen Ebichondo (Developer Evangelist Visual Studio) and Annie Njenga.

“Developers are important to our ecosystem in Africa because we rely on them to make our offerings locally relevant. The stronger the base of local developers developing on the Windows platform in Africa, the better the Windows experience will be for our consumers”, says Shina Oyetosho, Microsoft’s Developer Platforms Evangelism Lead, Anglophone West Africa.

Shina opined, “We are thrilled with the turnout in the last two days since the workshop started.  Especially in UNILAG where the workshop kicked-off, the event recorded an exceptional response which evidently showed a great hunger for knowledge by our local developers”.

Microsoft has increased its investments even further in reaching out to African developers as part of the 4Afrika Initiative, which was launched in February 2013. 

4Afrika is built on the belief that technology can accelerate growth for Africa, and that Africa can also accelerate technology for the world. “We know that African developers not only have the potential to solve local challenges, but to solve global ones too”, says Oyetosho.

Microsoft Dev. Camps was held in Nigeria at the University of Lagos, Julius Berger Hall on Tuesday the 7th May, and continued through at the Co-creation Hub, Hebert Macaulay Road, Yaba, on Wednesday 8th May and ended on Friday 10th May 2013.