Facebook to launch Nigerian Hub in African Tech Drive

Facebook to launch Nigerian Hub in African Tech Drive: Technology giants are trying to develop tech prospects in fast-growing Africa countries and the Giant social network platform, Facebook has become the latest of them to pursue a training programme in this region, as it recently announced it will open a "community hub space" in Nigeria next year, which is aimed at encouraging software developers and technology entrepreneurs. 

                                                             

In the latest release from the US social media company, it said the centre would host an "incubator programme" to help encourage and develop technology startups, and will also train 50,000 Nigerians in digital skills.

Although Facebook did not provide details of the period over which its planned training would take place in Nigeria, which is Africa's most populous country with 180 million inhabitants, but findings from us at Techlifereview reveals that the attributes that is attracting technology companies includes the rapid population growth, falling data costs and heavy adoption of mobile phones rather than Personal Computers in this sub Saharan part of the African continent. Hence they are looking to attract more users.

In a statement released on Wednesday by Emeka Afigbo, Facebook’s regional head of platform partnership, in which he said "We understand the important role Facebook plays here in Nigeria with developers and start-ups and are invested in helping these communities," Facebook said the programme, primarily aimed at software developers, entrepreneurs and students - would be offered in the capital city - Abuja, and other cities including Port Harcourt in the south, Calabar in the southeast and Kaduna in the north.


Last year, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder visited several technology companies in Lagos and his charitable foundation provided $24 million (approximately 8,640,000,000.00 Nigerian Naira) to Andela, a tech company that specializes in training software developers.


According to a release by Facebook, in which it said more than 22 million people already use its social media website every month in Nigeria not considering the large wealth gaps in this region of the world which causes many people to have little disposable income, and may not offer as much opportunity to add consumers as China or India.

And not to forget that a favorable way in which tech firms make money is through mobile adoption which ultimately tends to favor basic phone models and that combined with poor telecommunications infrastructure, can mean slow internet speeds and less internet surfing.

                                                     

Also Google's chief executive, Sundar Pichai during a July visit to Lagos said the company aimed to train 10 million people across the African continent in online skills over the next five years and in addition to that he also said it hoped to train 100,000 software developers in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. So software developers get set for the big things to come.