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By Emmanuel Yinka Fagbenle
About 80 participants of the at Code Plateau programme are already in the seventh week of their training as the initiative gathers steam to provide digital skills for young Nigerians being prepared to take up high scale technology jobs within and outside the country.
An initiative of the Plateau State Information and Communication Technology Development Agency (PICTDA), Code Plateau is designed under the Silicon Plateau framework to expand the economic potentials of Plateau state as well as provide employable skill sets in the state’s young people.
Under the scheme, young people are being trained in software development, digital marketing, and other related fields after which the trainees will then be deployed to gain hands-on experience and employment in Jos and other workplaces across Nigeria.
The eight months boot-camp is a full time immersive training designed to create employment for young Plateau state graduates that want to build a career in IT and kickstart their portfolio of projects that utilize modern and real-workplace technology stacks.
According to Director General, PICTDA, Mr. Daser David, Code Plateau will address the skill shortage in ICT and also provide a window for new employment and entrepreneurship opportunities.
“Code Plateau is one of the human resource developments and training schemes the agency is embarking on to address the high skill shortage in ICT. The Code Plateau initiative will help to advance the human capital goals of Governor Simon Lalong,” said David.
“Nigeria is currently lacking in sufficient numbers of skilled and experienced experts in ICT and other related professions and we aim to change that” he added.
Governor Lalong recently stated that “Plateau State is blessed with huge human capital that would be harnessed especially in areas of entrepreneurship and ICT to tackle unemployment.” He spoke while unveiling his agenda for development in the state tagged: ‘Plateau State in the Next Level: Policies and Programme of the Rescue Team Phase 2- Sustainable Economic Re-Birth.’
During the Code Plateau training, trainees have been able to engage teams from Tomruk iHub Multiverse, nHub, Google Digital Skills and the likes of the Nigeria Association of Computer Science Students (NACOSS) President, Abubakar Sadiq Hassan; Python Programmer, Micheal Iyanda and more experts. Trainees are expected to be able to build impressive, portfolio-ready projects to demonstrate their ability to add value in their new jobs as software developers.
