With Nigeria’s internet penetration projected to peak at 86 percent of the population by 2023, there is a need for tertiary institutions in the country to prioritise Information and Communication Technology (ICT) education to meet up with 21 Century realities. One way this can be achieved is through the creation of ICT laboratories in the various institutions.
Melania Ayoola, executive director, sales at Tranter IT, says her firm is already speaking with some collaborators to make this a reality.
According to Ayoola, Nigeria’s young population represents an opportunity for harnessing talents that will help the country compete globally and also export to other parts of the world.
Nigeria’s population is estimated at 200 million, according to the World Bank estimate. The country also has an annual Population growth rate of 2.6 percent with income per capita of $5,680, ranking 7th, globally and projected to hit 411 million people in 2050.
The country has a youthful population of about 54 percent, which means the government must collaborate with existing institutions to fill in the gaps in the educational system if it must provide a sound education in the sector.
“For example, we have a place for employment in every company, but what the companies are complaining about is that when the graduates come out, they don’t know anything,” Ayoola said. “But when they are properly exposed to practicals and experiments, it makes things simpler and creates better confidence in the graduates”
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Lare Ayoola, the chairman of the company, says the goal of the is to help organisations reduce the enormous cost of production they bear from running an IT unit.
He also believes that Nigeria’s economic progress depends on its investment in IT development.
“We have an army of the smartest people in the world, that resource is our strength and wealth,” he told BusinessDay at a summit the company held in Lagos and Abuja recently. “The people are easy to train, English speaking, hardworking, conscientious, crave to prosper, possessed with an innate ability to succeed. We have taken the potential impact of technology on our economy as a priority.”
With IT leading the world and corporate giants such as Amazon, Google, and Apple, thriving in providing platforms where people can engage and transact, local opportunities for exposure for Nigerian youths are still very limited.
“There should be a system that will help us advance our own national pride. There have been social conversations as to how hard we are working, but I feel that if they make certain opportunities available, those who want to make use of them, will do so, especially if there are added push through incentives,” Melania said.
“We have talents all over, but we need to incentivize them, push them into the right perspective, instead of allowing them to either waste away or go out of the country through tough borders. All our talents are going out, we are losing them to other countries. There is not enough to appreciate them.
Such partnerships with IT institutions, she further said, will offer sound practical ICT training in universities and enhance the quality of graduates from those institutions.
Through its partnership program with Indian-based Manage Engine, Tranter IT trains about 50 graduates at least three times per year for free. The ManageEngine brand has about 7,000 staff in their headquarters in India, these staff work on the messaging, support systems, development of the solutions.
“They ensure that the solutions work very well. Once, it was identified that this is a very good product, we had a steady incline in patronage. Not in isolation of equally aggressive marketing efforts. You can’t know a good thing until you know about it.
