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The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has presented laptops to top 10 ten learners of the just ended cohort 2 NITDA-COURSERA Training Programme.
RELATED: NITDA, Coursera train Nigerian youths on digital skills to enhance job prospects
The presentation was made by the Director General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, during a ceremony in Abuja to sign off a successful completion of their professional certification.
“After our first batch, we realised that the competition rate was not very encouraging, so, we looked at different options, brainstormed on possible best option to increase the competition rate and one of them was the concept of giving the laptops which eventually paid off as there were timely and tangible results gotten from learners,” said Abdullahi who was represented by the Acting Director, Digital Literacy and Capacity Building Department, Dr Amina Sambo- Magaji.
“We know that having a laptop will support you in actually using it as a tool for job, so, it was more of a double impact,” added Abdullahi while encouraging the beneficiaries to think outside the box and perform optimally in their respective areas of interest.
The NITDA boss reiterated that the youthful population of the country remains one of the key competitive advantages over other nations and as such should be explored to achieve the Federal Government’s quest of making Nigeria the global talent hub.
“For us to be able to harness the potential of that competitive advantage we have in our youthful population, that is why we are undertaking a number of capacity building initiatives to make sure that Nigerians have access to the global on-demand skills. Most of the beneficiaries completed their professional certification in Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, and Digital Marketing,” said Abdullahi.
Earlier, the Assistant Director, Digital Literacy and Capacity Building Department, NITDA, Dr. Ahmad Yusuf Tambuwal while giving an overview of the NITDA-COURSERA Scholarship Programme said Coursera is one of the world’s top online learning platforms hosting thousands of courses from some of the world’s best universities and tech companies.
According to Tambuwal, “in its effort to achieve its One Million Developer and Skills target, NITDA established a 3-year learning partnership with Coursera with effect from 19 October 2022”, stressing that the partnership is designed to be implemented in six (6) Cohorts: (Cohort 1 – Cohort 6).
“Learners in each Cohort will receive full access Coursera licenses for self-learning and professional development over a six (6) months duration and every 6 months, at least 4000 learners are graduated from the programme while a new set of learners are onboarded and invited to join the platform.
“NITDA organises monthly webinars to give learners direct access to Coursera and NITDA support teams, interaction and networking, Q&A, guest lectures etc.”, Tambuwal noted.
The NITDA-Cousera partnership is aimed at achieving some key objectives which include: empowering 24,000 Nigerians with digital & developer skills in three years, empowering Nigerian citizens with job-ready skills and create a large pool of IT talents for the local and global markets, fostering innovation and supporting start-ups with IT knowledge & skills needed to build real-life solutions.
Since the start of Cohort 2 in June 2023, learners have spent over 10,000 hours acquiring skills via Coursera every month. July witnessed over 20,000 learning hours. So far, 12,664 courses have been completed by the learners since the programme started.
