LAGOS—Facebook Founder, Mark Zuckerberg,
yesterday, arrived Nigeria unannounced. The
32-year-old tech enterpreneur surprisingly made
a sudden visit and inspection of activities at
the Co-Creation Hub, Yaba Lagos.
Nigerian tech entrepreneurs
His arrival to Nigeria is not unconnected to the
‘Facebook for developers’ workshop’ for
Nigerian engineers, product managers and
partners holding today in Lagos.
The event is expected to help the engineers
build better applications and monetise them
more effectively.
Before his arrival, it was earlier announced that
the company’s Director of Global product
Partnerships, Nigeria’s Ime Archibong was to
lead speakers to the event where Facebook
would unveil a ten-year roadmap that can help
improve Nigeria’s economy
Facebook is an online social networking
service based in Menlo Park, California, United
States, which Zuckerberg and his fellow
Harvard College students and roommates,
Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin
Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes formed on
February 4, 2004.
After its initial public offering, IPO in February
2012, Facebook began selling stock to the
public three months later, reaching an original
peak market capitalization of $104 billion. On
July 13, 2015, it became the fastest company
in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to reach a
market cap of $250 billion.
As of March this year, Facebook had hit
over 1.65 billion monthly active users out of
which 7.1 million people are daily users from
Nigeria. This makes the country Africa’s
biggest user of the social media platform.
However, Vanguard gathered that it was for
security reasons that Zuckerberg’s plan to visit
Nigeria and his eventual arrival was kept top
secret.
A close source who spoke to Vanguard said: “It
was a top secret and nobody was meant to
know before his arrival. It was actually for
security reasons but now that he is here, he
would be able to interact with tech
professionals and other Nigerians today in a
press conference at Eko Hotel and Suites
tomorrow (today).”
Being his first trip to Africa, Zuckerberg on
arrival met with developers and partners, and
also explored Nollywood.
One of his first stops on the trip was to visit a
‘Summer of Code Camp’ at the Co-Creation
Hub (CcHub) in Yaba, known as the Silicon
Valley of Nigeria where young developers learn
how to code and develop their solutions while
looking for mentors and angel investors.
At CcHub, Zuckerberg met with developers like
Temi Giwa, who runs a platform called Life
Bank that makes blood available when and
where it is needed in Nigeria. Life Bank saves
lives by mobilizing blood donations, taking
inventory of all blood available in the country,
and delivering blood in the right condition to
where it is needed.
Thrilled by level of technology development at
the CcHub, Mark Zuckerberg, said, “This is my
first trip to sub-Saharan Africa. I’ll be meeting
with developers and entrepreneurs, and learning
about the startup ecosystem in Nigeria. The
energy here is amazing and I’m excited to learn
as much as I can.
“The first place I got to visit was the Co-
creation Hub Nigeria (CcHUB) in Yaba. I got to
talk to kids at a summer coding camp and
entrepreneurs who come to CcHub to build and
launch their apps. I’m looking forward to
meeting more people in Nigeria.”
Fredteam
Comments
Post a Comment