Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

Lagos​ lauds SAP​, ​ tip​s​ ACW to bridge digital skills​ gap​

By Peter Oluka​
07 October 2016   |   2:26 am
The Lagos State Government has identified ‘Africa Code Week’ (ACW), a continent-wide initiative to spark the interest of African children, teenagers and young adults ...

Digital-future

The Lagos State Government has identified ‘Africa Code Week’ (ACW), a continent-wide initiative to spark the interest of African children, teenagers and young adults in software coding, as a digitally revolutionary approach to get the youths acquainted with the required skills set to face future workplace/ technological developments.

Spearheaded by SAP as part of its social investments to drive sustainable growth in Africa, Africa Code Week (ACW) is the story of hundreds of schools, teachers, ministers, community centers, code clubs, NGOs, businesses and non-profits getting together to give birth to the largest digital literacy initiative ever organized on the African continent.

Speaking at the week-long AfricaCodeWeek 2016 in Lagos, Mr. Femi Oduniyi, Commissioner, Lagos State Ministry of Science and Technology, said that with SAP’s long-term goal through ACW, to empower over 200,000 teachers and positively impacting the lives of five million children and youth within the next 10 years, the programme is appropriate and critical to the State’s plan to empower the youths.

Oduniyi said, “One of the things that drive this government is the action to grow and empower our youths. One of the areas through which we can articulate that, is through the information and communication technologies (ICTs). We are in the era of digital revolution. This government wants to ensure that we do not miss out of that revolution; we want to empower our future leaders who are the youths of today.

“We want to help them to develop their creativity and be able to think out of the box. Today they are using coding tools; tomorrow they will be empowered to do more than that, by developing programs on e-health, security apparatuses and so forth. What is been imbedded in them today are skills required for the future.”

Also speaking at the event was Mr. Olu Familusi, head, Business Operations, SAP West Africa, who said that with businesses increasingly digital and globally connected, coding is the new language for individual and economic growth.

”Moving forward, coding skills will almost become like the math and English. That is what we see and we are trying to address same. At this point in time in Africa, less than one percent (less 1%) of school leavers has this skill.

0 Comments