Microsoft stakes $1m in Nigeria's capacity build-up

By MELVIN AWOLOWO

Microsoft has invested over $1million (about N120 million) to provide ICT capacity for the technology-denied in Nigeria with more than 10, 000 people as direct beneficiaries of its Citizenship Activity since the company kicked off the scheme nearly half a decade ago, company officials told newsmen in Abuja recently to round off the first official visit to the country of Microsoft's Vice President, Unlimited Potential Group, Michael Rawding.

Microsoft is mainly focused on providing capacity through the utilisation of the ICT tool to improve livelihood and youth employability programme "We have able to take IT to women in the rural areas and increased opportunity for economic empowerment," said top company official of the company in Nigeria, Hajiya Jummai Umar.

Since the computer giant opened its Nigeria and West Africa office in Lagos more than five years ago, it has offered support for citizen empowerment through ICT by putting its weight behind several initiatives including digital villages in Lagos and Owerri as well as the computer resource centres in Abeokuta.

But it has also initiated its own self-propelled programme fulfilling part of its goals at enhancing individual and community opportunities through ICT skill acquisition. These activities are deployed either through formal education setting the example of which is our Partners in Learning Program (PiL) or the Community Technology Skills Program (CTSP) and the Language Localisation Programme, said Rawding while answering questions from a select member of the Nigerian media.

Microsoft's Citizenship Activity is fostered on close working with non-government organisations (NGOs) and other development partners to unleash the potentials that exist amongst the Nigerian people especially women and youth. "This group of people essentially represent over 70% of the population of over 140 million people, but unfortunately they also represent the most excluded and the poorest," said Rawding.

Under the scheme, more 3500 students and teachers have been trained over a period of two years under PiL programme in Nigeria in areas that include: introduction to Computers, Information Communication Technology skills for colleges of education, Helpdesk support technical training, education support centre, and database management system.

Beneficiaries include colleges of education, Ilesha, Ila-Oragun, Katsina-Ala, Oju, Obudu,

Yola, Afaha Nsit, Kano, and Pankshin among others spread out in all of Nigeria's six geographic zones. Microsoft is mainly focused on providing capacity through the utilisation of the ICT tool to improve livelihood and youth employability programme, said General Manager, Microsoft Nigeria, Chineneye Mba-Uzoukwu. Under Partners in Learning, Microsoft is working with governments, ministries of education, and other key stakeholders to offer a spectrum of education resources including tools, programmes, and practices.

The Microsoft CTSP is a global community-based learning programme focused on extending IT skills and economic opportunities to enable young people and adults to realize their potential. Through cash grants, software donations, technology solutions, and specialized curriculum, CTSP supports projects around the world, creating opportunities that can transform communities and help bring the benefits of technology to a quarter billion underserved people worldwide by 2010. http://www.microsoft.com/unlimitedpotential

In Nigeria, Microsoft has been working with eight partners as follows to provide access to IT to the poor and excluded who will ordinarily not have this access. This is to enable them to actively participate in the new economy and provide them with life skills that will engender change in life style. Of the eight partners that we are working with, the six zonal community resource centres listed below are initiatives of the President of the United States of America executed through the American Embassy in Nigeria. They are now recipient of our grants and curriculum to build capacity of different segment of the excluded people in utilising the IT tools as follows:

In the North East Zone, in Partnership with the Iya Abubakar Community Resource Centre Bauchi, Microsoft is working to blend the need to utilise IT skills in improving livelihood initiatives. The Home Makers, as the programme is called, has empowered the women in Seclusion (some very well educated, but confessed to not have had anything to do with western education for 22 years until the CTSP programme) to eradicate seasonal trading and learn skills like desktop publishing. These women are now sources of wedding invitation cards, business cards, printed tee shirts, handkerchiefs and other sundry print items in their communities.

In the South West Zone, we are working with the Abeokuta Community Resource Centre to build capacity amongst people (especially women) in the tie/dye (fabric) business to deploy the ICT tools to improve on their marketing and sales ability. Other areas include the Bola Ige Information Technology Centre which is working mainly in the North Central Zone with physically challenged persons, the Community Resource Centre in Calabar which is offering fishermen and women in the South-South Zone training with emphasis on the use of IT tools to improve communication and also a source of information for sales and other ventures. In Kaduna, the Community Resource Centre for the North West zone s working with Microsoft to improve the lots of the traders and farmers through the deployment of the IT tools while in the South East zone, the company is partnering with the Community Resource Centre, in Enugu to improve the lot of the young entrepreneurs in the spare part business. These youth who are mostly between the ages of 11-18 have dropped out of school and are apprentices with big spare parts dealers to learn the trade. Exposure to the basic computer skills and its uses with the reach of the internet is a source of establishing and expanding their business horizons.

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