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About 859 young Nigerians have completed training sessions at this year’s Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) Bootcamp for Kids organised by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) through its subsidiary: the National Director, National Centre for Artificial intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR).
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“We want to see games with African characters, games that uphold and promote our indigenous culture and values as well as educational games and many more”, said Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi at the closing ceremony of the 10-day bootcamp designed to expose young Nigerians to coding related programmes including computer languages and games.
The bootcamp held in Abuja, Lagos and Kano simultaneously.
NITDA boss with one of the particpants at STEM Bootcamp for Kids (SB4Kids) in Abuja.
“Seven out of the ten fastest growing and better paying jobs globally are in the Information Technology (I.T) sector; So, I need you all to seize this golden opportunity to start coding early in life, because you need to become an exceptional person by having initiatives that can solve problems,” Abdullahi stressed, adding that the country was working towards bridging the global talent gap by becoming a supplier of skills.
His words: We have an ambitious target of making Nigeria a talent global supplier. We have launched some initiatives like training one million tech developers in the next 18 months and the talent gab analysis where we want to get the best line of information about the number of talents we have in the country. Then, we will come up with a National Talent Strategy Plan on how to position Nigeria as a global talent supplier.”
He said NITDA was also doubling efforts to ensure that trained interns at the NCAIR come up with solutions on malaria and diabetics as well as other health related issues, adding that some of them are learning to apply drone tech to improve agriculture and security.
According to the NITDA boss, catching them young and spurring kids to make use of the computer which has become a liberal act will translate to building a career in money-making digital ventures, thereby including them in nation building.
Earlier, in his welcome address, the National Director, NCAIR, Ya’u Garba said that the Stem Bootcamp for kids (SB4Kids) 2022, has successfully exposed the kids to a series of hands-on training in different areas, including artificial intelligence, robotics, extended reality, digital communication and drone technologies, among others.
“These kids whose ages fall between 8-16 years were tutored and urged to imbibe a passion in STEM in order to create an early interest in digital technologies which will in the long run shape their future careers accordingly”, Garba said.
