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By Jeremiah Unom
Come to Minna, Niger state in central Nigeria and experience the transforming essence of technology on people and environment.
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Minna is roughly 120 km from Abuja, about an hour drive. According to United Nations – World Population Prospects, the current metro area population of Minna in 2023 is 496,000. The city is a hub for education and agriculture. Minna is home to learning institutions that include the Federal University of Technology, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University and yes; Motiv8 Technologies Limited, an inspiring tech company with a focus on community development.
Motiv8 touts itself as the largest tech space in Minna focusing on “building people, businesses and technologies through workspace, digital skills training, and branding.”
The firm was founded in 2018 by Muideen Bello, Hamzat Lateef, Olaniyi Emmanuel, and Adeshina Ridwan. The team of four with a shared dream to create a sustainable community where information technology is accessible to all have helped to foster an academy that provides training to aspiring tech enthusiasts plus a workspace that offers a conducive environment for collaboration and productivity.
Why Minna, not Lagos?
Such aspirations are usually anchored in major cities like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano, Kaduna or even Abuja where business turnovers are higher and return on investment (RoIs) are more readily guaranteed.
Why did Motiv8 berth in Minna?
Team lead, Emmanuel says the enterprise was driven to motivate a new generation of young people with capacity in IT and equip them to leverage emerging opportunities. And you don’t have to be in Lagos or any of the major cities to access these digital skills or get kitted to become part of the active workforce in a digital economy.
Mission to build people
Motiv8 says part of its mission-objectives is to provide the “best way to build in-demand tech skills without breaking the bank.”
It appears to be achieving that goal in Minna where a recent study by the Federal University of Technology detailed that Minna has a poverty incidence of 67%, well above the national rate of 54.4%. Motiv8 is offering high-cost training at lower, subsidized rates to young people to help build the needed skillsets that will make them functional across sectors.
The company actively engages with the youth by organizing seminars as part of its community outreach campaigns to offer free coding classes to secondary school students in order to empower them with valuable technological skills, and open doors to a world of new possibilities.
Motv8 is thriving in Minna as a hub of creativity and innovation with a keen focus on nurturing talent from an early age. The company provides working and study spaces “for students to explore, learn, and create with easy access to the internet and other essential tools.”
Pushing its enterprise brand
But it is also pushing its enterprise brand with an extensive repertoire of services including brand identity development, web and app development, e-commerce solutions, digital marketing, V-SAT installation, UI/UX design, networking, data analytics & science, and graphics design amongst others.
Part of its ongoing projects include to develop a fire outbreak prevention device, enhancing community safety with swift hazard detection; a prepaid water system, revolutionizing water management through digital payment and conservation efforts; and a swathe of initiatives leveraging AI to create transformative apps for data analytics, pattern recognition, and personalized recommendations. It is also twitching innovative solutions to help address pressing ecological issues in Niger State.
Additional Editing: Asake Moyo
