NiN_April

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The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) on Tuesday, April 2, 2009 flagged off its Information Technology Training for youth in Kano under the Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential (UP) scheme. At a ceremony held at the auditorium of the School of Technology, Kano State Polytechnic, CITAD disclosed that with support from Microsoft Corporation it intends to train 400 youth across the North West zone of the country this year. The ceremony was chaired by the Director-General of the Kano State Directorate of Social Reorientation, Dr. Bala Mohammed who was represented by Alhaji Sani Mohammed Usman, the Special Assistant to the Governor on Adaidaita Sahu while the Guest Speaker was Dr. Bashir S. Galadanci, the State Commissioner for Science and Technology.

In his welcome remarks, the Director of CITAD explained that the participants for the programme were drawn from different local governments of the state. He said that aim of the programme was to imparts IT skills on the participants that would make them either employable or to be self-employed. He disclosed tat last year under the Employability Programme jointly supported by Microsoft Corporation and the USA Government 200 youth were trained and that many of them were now working as interns and volunteers with different organizations in the state.

In her remarks, the Corporation Citizenship Programme of Microsoft, Mrs., Nana Adjoor Mintah said that the Unlimited Potentials is the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility engagement aimed at driving technical into the communities. She said this was the third year of the UP in Nigeria and provides training in all the six zones of the country. She later presented set of the Local Language interface software packages to the Hon. Commissioner of Science and Technology.

In his lecture, Dr. Galadanci expressed appreciation with both CITAD and Microsoft for the initiative which he said has significance to the Kano State’s ICT Park project. He explained the essence of the project which he wais aimed at using ICTs as an economic sector to provide jobs and create wealth in the state. He revealed that already the project has reached an advanced stage and that the park would soon be commissioned. May companies, with employment spaces running to hundreds have already shown their commitment to move into the park was soon as it as complete he added. He explained that with this development there would great demand for IT skill people and this was he was urging the beneficiaries to make good use of this opportunity as they would be needed in the ICT Park.

In his own goodwill massage the President of the Kano State Chapter of the Association of Local Government Chairmen and Chairman of Tarauni Local Government said that he was happy that the participants were drawn from different local governments and that they were ready to support the initiative. He revealed that all the local governments have been directed to set up computer centres in their local governments and hoped that many of the participants would be available to work at these centres.

Other guests at the occasion were the Director General of Directorate for Youth Development, the Chairman of Bagwai Local Government and the Chairman of the Kano State Council of Youths as well as representatives of development partners in the state.

As part of the celebration of this year’s International Women’s Day, CITAD organized a public hearing on the State of maternal Health in Jigawa State on 11^th March 2009 at the State Library, Dutse. The event was chaired by Hajiya Hadiza Abdulwahab, the State Permanent Secretary for Rural Infrastructure Development while the Royal Father of the Day was the Emir of Dutse who was represented by Sarkin Gabas and Hakimin Shuwarin, Alhaji Mustafa Abubakar. Guest Speaker at the occasion was Dr. Tajudeen AbdulRaheem, the Deputy Director, UN Millennium Campaign, Nairobi, Kenya. Presentations were made by state agencies, civil society organizations and development partners. Over 100 people attended the event. The pictures below capture some of the moments of the occasion

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In pursuance of parts of its goal and objectives which is to ensure Computer literacy and development through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Kano State, the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) team proceeded to Government Girls Junior Secondary School, Jido, Kano State on the 19^th March, 2009 as part of its series of enlightenment and sensitization campaign. The team consisted of Umar Farouq Uthman (Program Officer Research), Abdullahi A. Abdullahi (Training Assistant), Kawu M. Ahmad (Interns), Hajara A. Ahmad (Interns) and Abdullhi Dan Balarabe. On arrival at the School, the team proceeded to the Principal’s Office where we introduced ourselves and told him of our purpose to the School, he said they have been expecting us. We now explained that due to some hitches, we couldn’t come as earlier promised. The principal; Mal. Abbas Nafiu then ordered for a Class to be arranged for us. We then proceeded to the Class where the Students and most of the Staffs were seated for the Class. The Principal went ahead and introduced us telling them the name of the Organization we came from and our purpose. He then gave the floor to us, the Presenter; Umar Farouq introduced himself and urged other members of the team to do same.

In order to make the class interactive, the Presenter started by asking the Students” who could explain what a Computer is?” The young girls were initially shy, but as the Class progressed they became a beehive of activities; asking and answering questions, seeking for clarification etc. The Presenter explained to them what a Computer is; its parts and their uses, also the Components and their functions were also explained. Lastly he highlighted the importance of Computers to the Society and its uses in our daily interactions. He also urged the Students to choose careers in the Information Technology field and also others that had other ambitions to inculcate ICTs into their field of study. Then came the Question and Answer segment, questions were thrown to the Students and they actively answered them unlike the shy girls they were earlier. CITAD Souvenirs and IT books were presented to those that answered the questions posed. The Presenter then gave the floor to some of the Staffs to comment on the event. Mal. Husseini Garba, the Islamic Studies and Arabic Teacher then told the Students this presentation is just a tip of the iceberg in the Knowledge of Computer, he further encouraged them not to throw away the Knowledge they have just acquired and to use them wherever they find themselves. Mal. Bashir A. Said on behalf of the Students and Staffs of the School while thanking CITAD for the honor bestowed on them by the visit and the knowledge the Students acquired. He further hoped that this wouldn’t be the last time it would be visiting the School and also emphasized that they the Teachers are in dire need of Computer Training and would be very privileged if they could be considered for training.

Finally, the Principal while delivering his vote of thanks thanked CITAD and urged them not to relent in their effort in spreading and sensitizing the knowledge of ICTs. He further said they had a Computer Teacher with no Computers to teach the Students. He said any effort that would enable them to posses a Computer would be gladly appreciated. In response the Presenter, Umar Farouq said he would relay all their messages to the Director of CITAD. He also informed them that there was a Computer acquisition scheme where they could acquire refurbished Computers.

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By

Y. Z. Ya’u

08056180208

It was a one-table exhibition, arranged at the foyer of the Bola Ige Information Technology Centre, National Women Centre, Abuja. The date was Tuesday, 10^th March, 2009. On display were baby cots, baby bag, basket, various types of perfumes, soaps, chocolates, curie, pomade and many other household needs. These items were products of women who were trained on Information Technology skills at the Prof. Iya Abubakar Community Centre, Bauchi under the Microsoft Corporation social corporate responsibility flagship programme, the Unlimited Potential. Under the programme at the Bauchi centre, 50 women living on purdah (seclusion) were trained on basic IT skills and entrepreneurship. Noting that Bauchi is a centre of tourism, the programme planners had thought to add value to this by targeting women who already had some handcraft skills.

The result was an astonishing torrent of creativity that has produced these products which are of very high international standards, yet all made from locally available materials. If you run into customs officials at either the airport or the border with these items, you will have hard time explaining to them that these are local products, and not imported ones. Does this not tell us that industry lies in the empowerment of the people?

The secret as revealed by Yusuf Mahmoud, a staff of the Iya Abubaka Community Centre who conducted people round the exhibition was that the women were able to leverage their newly acquired IT skills, browsing through relevant websites, downloading designs and recipes which they then adopted and used local materials to produce their items. Their furniture making mini-factory in Bauchi is an elite must.

Internet has allowed them to research and experiment with various formulas, they were able for instance to discover that the reason for theharshness of most locally produced toilet was the wrong mixed of chemicals and used this knowledge to produce a soap that is soft to the skin and adopted to the local weather conditions.

Today many of these women who are secluded and therefore living from homes, have found an outlet for their creativity through the internet. They are economically empowered and fully engaged. They have also found an outlet for these products through online marketing.

For the country, Jummai Umar-Ajibola, the Citizenship Manager of Microsoft, said the contribution of the women is that by uploading their recipes to the internet so that other people can download and use, they are re-branding the image of the country from one that is associated with the cyber crime to a potentially enrich networking engagement of global benefit. There is of course also the fact that by helping them to be on their own, the value added by the IT training on them has created jobs which are generating incomes directly for the beneficiaries and indirectly adding to the wealth of the country.

The event at which the exhibition was presented was the kick off of the third phase of the Unlimited Potential Programme of Microsoft which also provided an opportunity to review the achievement of the first and second phase of the programme. No doubt form the exhibition and tales from others, there is something to celebrate of the programme.

The Unlimited Potential Programme was started two years ago with a grant of $90,000 to the Bola Ige Information Technology Centre and five of its partners to extend access to ICT skills to disadvantaged and marginalized people, who will otherwise not have access to such training. It is targeted at delivering relevant, accessible and affordable solutions in three interrelated areas that are crucial to developing economic opportunity, namely transforming education, fostering local innovation and enabling jobs and opportunities.

Since the inception of the programme, over 4000 people, men and women have been reached across all the six zones of the country. In summing up the achievement, Dr. Many Emechata, the Director of the BIITC and Coordinator of the Project said it had been a resounding success. It has opened up new windows of opportunity for the beneficiaries and enables them to increase their market scope with exposure to a wider community of people engaged or interested in their skills.

The programme was domiciled in six centers across the country, each with its specific focus. The north east zone which was handled by the Iya Abubakar Community centre focused on secluded women in the first year and widows in the second year. In the South West, located at the Community Computer Centre, Abeokuta the targets were on women focusing on tie and dye business. The Calaber Zone tackled fishermen and women while Kaduna Zone trained women traders and farmers.

The BIITC which handled the North Central in addition to being the coordinator of the project had a more challenging engagement. It trained disabled people in the first year focusing on those with impaired vision, hard hearing and the physically challenged. For the second year, it targeted HIV positive people. The experience in both cases was rewarding as it not only provided these people with new skills and knowledge but also facilitated their integration into the mainstream society which tend to stigmatize such people.

This year the programme added three addition organizations to reach out to wider geographical spread of the country as well as target other groups of people. Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN) in Lagos will now take over the implementation in the South West and will be focusing on training youths. In South East, Women Aid Collective (WACOL) will step in with special emphasis on widows while in the North West, the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) will take over and focus on youths and journalists as well as creating an interface between the trained people and their governments.

So far, Microsoft has put over $220,000 into the project. Of course for the world software giant, this could be a small amount, but then if all other companies operating in the IT sector could do the same, we would certainly be getting nearer to the goal of universal IT literacy for all, which the United Nations hopes would be achieved globally by 2015. But there is even more to getting social corporate responsibility. Governments in the country would have to realize that the dream for a better economy cannot come through without investment in education which today is IT-driven.

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By

Y. Z. Ya’u

08056180208

On Tuesday 24^th February this year, I attended a small and brief ceremony at which the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) presented three laptops to the Kano-based Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) as part of its support for the annul ICT quiz programme for secondary school students that CITAD has been organizing. It was also a double occasion as CITAD itself at the venue immediately handed over one of the laptops to Government Girls Science Technical College, Kofar Nassarawa, Kano as the overall winners of the 2008 edition of the quiz which held in November last year. They had beaten 29 other schools from four states to emerge top in the keenly competed event.

This is of course is only one of the many instances in which the telecommunications regulatory body has been assisting schools with computer. A number of secondary schools in different parts of the country have benefited from its digital study centre donation in which beneficiary schools were given a 100-computer terminal laboratory. Many universities have also benefited form the donation of computers and VSAT equipment as well as payment of bandwidth for internet access. There is of course the even more ambitious programme of the Universal Access Provision Fund (USPF) which is establishing a community communication centre in all the senate districts of the country.

In making the presentation, the NCC Executive Vice Chairman, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, who was presented by the Zonal Controller of the Kano Zone of the NCC, Alhaji Adamu Amshi said that NCC was supporting with the event because it would help in the attainment of its vision, which was to facilitate the creation of an information rich society that is comparable globally in quality of telecommunication service provision. He reasoned that such an information rich society cannot be built without digital literacy. It requires achieving national universal computer proficiency, which itself is only possible when every child has access to computer with which to learn.

Digital literacy is the ability of people to work and interact effectively with information technology mediated and dependent world of today. There is no doubt that things have dramatically changed, including they ways we do things. The landscape of literacy itself has so changed that our definition of functional literacy must not limited to just reading and writing but must also include ability to use digital machines such as the computer and GSM phones.

What struck me during the presentation ceremony was the fact that while we all agree that every body must be computer literate, we are making very little effort to ensure that our children do actually have the opportunity to be computer literate in schools. If we are to take count of how many of our schools, both public and private, have computers for students and pupils to learn with, we would be shocked to realize that the proportion of schools is so small in comparison with the totality of schools we have in the country.

In the last two or so years both WAEC and NECO have migrated to online registration by requiring candidates to register from their websites. JAMB has also migrated. All of these bodies also now release their results online. There is has recent indication that JAMB is even considering to start online examinations. Yet have we cared to find out how our students and school administrators are coping with the situation?

There is even an irony on the part of both NECO and WAEC. These two examination bodies are yet to make computer studies an examinable subject in their examinations in spite of various calls by many stakeholders including IT professional associations. A relevant curriculum for secondary schools had long been prepared, yet its implementation has been bogged down by the lack of seriousness in addressing the lack of computers and computer teachers for the schools. Why will an organization that does not see the need to make computer studies examinable in its examinations insist that all students must register online?

There has been also broad agreement at the level of the National Council for Education that computer studies should compulsory, yet there is no corresponding commitment to examine the subject. Making computer studies examinable will not only make students to become computer literate before their final year but will also encourage both parents and school proprietors to invest in the provision of IT facilities in the schools.

I have seen how a few entrepreneurs make money out of desperate students wishing to beat the deadline for the various examination bodies. Since their schools do not have computers and access to internet, they have to go to commercial cyber cafes to register for these examinations. In many communities there are no internet access points and students and their principals have to travel long distances to make the registration. In the process many miss the deadlines.

By the time they reach the café, of course the students and their teachers are often not computer literate, and therefore have to rely on the café staff or some of the other ad hoc registration attendants. Students are charged huge amounts for this registration. Even mere checking of results or admissions lists to institutions of higher learning (many of which now also only published their admission list on their websites) charge as much as Five Hundred Naira.

The rationale behind the CITAD’s ICT quiz has been to use it as an advocacy tool to draw attention to these anomalies while at the same time encouraging both students and teachers to take ICT seriously by rewarding those who have excelled. Each time the event is held, it is remainder to governments and other proprietors of schools that there is need to ensure that there are computers in their schools.

The NCC gesture is meant to send two messages. At one level, it is a demonstration of NCC’s commitment to the realization its vision for Nigeria. At another level, it is a challenge and a call to other corporate organizations to consider leveraging their corporate social responsibility through the provision of computers to schools or supporting causes that would enhance the penetration of ICT in our schools. If many of these organizations follow the example of the NCC, our children will learn in the prerequisite environment that would make them to compete favorably with their peers across the world.

NiN_February 2009

Training@citad

By

Y. Z. Ya’u

08056180208

As a child, one of the popular games we enjoyed was rolling over the pyramids of groundnut husks, itself a sign of a much groundnut had been harvested in the community. Of course we knew that the groundnuts left for Kano, from where they formed part of the famous Kano groundnut pyramids. These pyramids were the distinctive landscape of Kano. They adored every promotional document about Kano and became in reality the signpost of the city. We marveled at the orderly way in which they were arranged and thought there was no any other architecture that had better aesthetics with a surreal appeal.

While we took it as the sign of the prosperity of Kano, we never associated it with colonial economic architecture. We were too young for this. This could only happen years later at the university. Of course by then the pyramids had disappeared. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was the feeling that industrialization would now replace agriculture. Afterall, nationally we were experimenting with import substitution industrialization.

Thus, additional industrial layouts were opened up in Kano and many new industries and companies sprang up in the city. Trade unions became a feature of the city and it became easy to bestraddle students’ union activism with solidarity organizing for workers. Industrialization added more to the commercial activism of Kano and it was this vibrant commerce dominated economy of Kano that made the Governor of Kano State at the time, Abubakar Rimi, to initiate what for years we have been referring to in Kano as the Investment building. Originally planned to be a 14-storey building to be used as a commercial complex, this was later reduced to 10 storeys.

Soon we found that rather than enforcing the right to unionism, we had to organize to protect the jobs of the workers who were being thrown out to the streets as the boom of the 1970s gave way to the crisis that entered in the 1980s. By the time the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) was introduced in 1986, the signs of the collapsed of attempted industrialization in the country were visible everywhere.

Kano of course suffered greatly for this. Thousands workers lost their jobs as many factories and companies closed down. Much of the de-industrialization of the later period had to do with the crisis of power, inconsistency in economic policies nationally and a political class that was still steeped at the level of primitive accumulation. The collapse of industrialization was further compounded by the seeming crisis of commerce based economy that has characterized Kano. One of its major strains was a set of communal conflicts that were to a large degree associated with the rise of a new ethnicity that was the product of a state that failed to justify itself following the rapacious attack on the fabrics of the welfare state in the country by SAP.

The investment building was abandoned and for years virtually everyone forget its original concept. Of course successive regimes attempted to complete the building but with no clearly defined purpose. Now this build is coming to life as the first information and communication (ICT) Park not only in Kano but also in the country. Already, the interior of the building had been redesigned to meet the new purpose for which it would now be used. World class IT infrastructure is being deployed so that companies would have access to internet and other IT facilities with speed and reliability that will match any where in the world.

The transformation of the building into an ICT Park itself is a long story. It started with the adoption of an ICT Policy for the State in 2005. In 2006, the office of the then Special Adviser to the Governor on Education and Information Technology, which was charged with the responsibility of implementing the state ICT Policy, gathered another group of ICT professionals and scholars to brainstorm of how the policy could be implemented. Out of this brainstorming, it was decided that following the footsteps of leading developing countries that have taken ICT seriously such India and Malaysia, the state government should opt for a perspective that sees ICTs more as an economic sector that can generate wealth and create jobs as well as provide access to IT products and services. This requires the establishment of ICT Parks, the types that dot India, Singapore, among others.

The ICT Park is to be commissioned soon. When in operation, it will initially house over 300 ICT business and companies of different sizes. It is also expected that within the first five years of its operation, it would create thousand of jobs. Without doubt, it is both an ambitious and challenging project, ambitious because it requires resources and commitment to pull, challenging because to make Kano a preferred destination, especially for global outsourcing would require not just proactive and aggressive marketing but also the capacity to establish and implement a regime of incentives, with a long term consistency, that can attract companies elsewhere to relocate to the park while ensuring a ready market for their products and services.

The transformation of Kano from an agricultural-based commercial city symbolized by the groundnut pyramids to an ICT enclave represented by the ICT Park, is not just symbolic. It is both structural and historical. Historically, because we are moving into the information age, which is ICT mediated and dependent. In such an era, virtually all business interactions and transactions could be conducted through the internet. While the network is thus a necessary condition to which every country must have to respond to, capitalizing on the ICT sector as an economic sector is a structural choice which many countries have taken. India today, it is reported, earns more from export of ICT services and products than Nigeria does from oil.

A single high-rise ICT park building of course cannot on the popular imagination compare with the vast grounds pyramids of the 1960s of Kano. But its potential to transform the economy of the state is enormous. If properly harnessed, Kano would be on its way to an economic renewal that would make it a major a hub of the cyber space globally.

In a highly dynamic knowledge world of today, those who make the early start are always more likely to remain at the head of the race. It is this early state that Kano State must actualize. It is possible in this little piece of land, the national may learn lessons that would inform its repositioning in the information age.