By PRINCE OSUAGWU
Apparently tired of mourning the inability of the Nigerian government to create sufficient jobs for its teeming youths, the Nigerian Internet Group, NIG, has decided to use the means available to it to remedy the situation.
It created the Internet for Jobs (I4J) Initiative designed to explore the potential of the Internet to create jobs for the people and transform the nation into a knowledge society.
The initiative creates environment where business and government services are available on-line and the citizens are positively engaged in knowledge driven activities.
Every year the NIG gives out grants to young and innovative IT entrepreneurs, who have built web-based solutions with potential of creating thousands of jobs. The target is to identify good solutions which with the help of expert network engineers, would be turned into great solutions.
Meanwhile, in its 2012 edition, about 4 teams of young Nigerian developers, content developers, medical doctors and financial analysts were chosen as the I4J grant winners.
Their digital ventures are focused on the implementation of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and creating jobs for young Nigerians using the Internet.
The 4 digital revolutionary projects were chosen from approximately 40 submissions in 5 categories by a panel of 6 renowned judges. The judges scored each project based on different criteria including Innovation, Creativity, Entrepreneurial Spirit, Proof of concept, Versatility, Implemented solutions, Sustainable concepts, business models and solutions, collaboration and teamwork as well as Presentation Skills.
Having determined the four winners, NIG last week, awarded the recipients with a whopping N4,000,000.00 grants that will help enhance and grow their projects with the view of employing more young Nigerians as they grow.
Although the four groups would go home with 1million each, NIG will also play a mentoring and monitoring role to ensure that grant is applied in the best way possible with the core focus of making sure these projects all succeed.
However, the winning category that attracted much attention is the Efiko app category. It is a social mobile quiz platform designed primarily for secondary school students to enhance their learning experience by engaging students in topical quiz related to their school's curriculum.
It promotes healthy competition by providing student rankings by demography and provides a social learning platform where student's can learn from one another and adult mentors. This project was born at the Co-Creation Hub Nigeria during the popular TechInEd event.
Vanguard Nigeria