Nigeria on Wednesday scored another feat in the quest to leverage Information Technology (IT) to better the economy, as one of the most sought after IT gurus in world, Facebook Founder; Mark Zuckerberg met with players in the country’s technology ecosystem.
The event is historically, been the first of its kind on the African continent.
Zuckerberg, 32, a billionaire American programmer, Internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist who surprisingly landed in the country on Tuesday evening told the interactive forum in Lagos that “I am willing and ready to inspire indigenous developers with creative ideas that can help the country, the continent and the wide world at large.”
“I am here for tech development and entrepreneurship and business research,” he added.
It was obvious that Zuckerberg likes Nigeria and battle ready to give local tech programmers direction to the international audience and market, according to him this was further expressed by creating the Hausa version of Facebook.
“I am proud of putting Hausa language on the platform. I know with time more languages from Nigeria will also go live, see, there are over 18 million face book in Nigeria.
Facebook team appreciates and like this, but we want to give more and do more as we grow the platform to accommodate business to business interface from the being just a social media networking portal.”
The gathering at the Eko hotel and Suit was filled with players in the private sector of the nation’s economy which significantly pictured information technology sector as private investors driven –though there was no government official or representative at the forum- but the interest of the government and the nation at large reflected in the over three hours deliberations.
Giving insight into how he used his engineering mindset to help build Facebook (FB, Tech30), a company that’s now worth north of $360 billion admitted giving up coding to manage his company was “a little sad but tough”.
“There is elegance to writing code that I miss,” Zuckerberg added, “The code always does what you want — and people don’t.” In what drew his audience sharing he quickly pointed out that “people can surprise you by going above and beyond expectations, too.”
It could be recalled that his visit included a trip to a Yaba, known as the Silicon Valley of Nigeria, where he toured a coding camp for kids and met with about 50 local startup founders and developers at CcHub, a local innovation center.
According to Zuckerberg, “Facebook team has been increasingly involved in African initiatives this year. In June, the foundation — the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative — made a multi-million dollar investment in Andela, a two-year-old startup that trains African software developers and gives them full-time roles at international companies.”
“The team has also put his weight behind the “Free Basics,” platform which provides free internet access to cellphone users in under-served countries, including Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya.”
For The use of facebook to grow he however said there is need for more investment in infrastructure which can at least work on a 2G network, however there is expectation that the country will move in tandem with time and development.”
