FG to Receive First Set of Software Developers For Incubation

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THE MANAGING DIRECTOR, INFOSOFT LIMITED, MR. PIUS OKIGBO; THE MANAGING DIRECTOR CSCS, MR. KYARI BUKAR; THE CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER (CIO) STANBIC IBTC, MR. LEYE BABATUNDE AND SPECIAL ASSISTANCE TO THE MINSTER OF COMMUNICATION & TECHNOLOGY, MR. BUNMI OKUNOWO, ALL THE PANEL OF JUDGES DURING THE TECHLAUNCHPAD INITIATIVE SCREENING AND SELECTION PROCESS MANAGING BY ACCENTURE IN LAGOS ON SATURDAY

The Federal Government is expected to receive the first batch of software developers by next week that would undergo one year training a the Lagos Incubation Centre.

Accenture Consulting, the Project Management Office (PMO), that is handling the ongoing selection process of software developer, said 10 teams would emerge at the end of the exercise, and would be handed over to the Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, who would in turn present them at the Lagos Incubation Centre for one-year training.

 

The minister had early this year, launched the Techlaunchpad initiative that seeks to groom software developers and make their products marketable and acceptable within and outside Nigeria. 

Senior Project Manager for Techlaunchpad, Mr. Adebayo Ebrahim who confirmed the ongoing selection exercise, said “10 Teams will be selected and sent to the Lagos incubation centre for one year where they will receive training on practical skills on how to further develop and improve on their application software. 

He explained that the 10 teams would be handed over to the minister who would then present them at the incubation centre for hands-on practical training for one year. The selection exercise, which commenced last week, is expected to end this week and the presentation done next week, Ebrahim said.   

The training programme is the idea of Techlaunchpad, an initiative of the Federal Government, but has a joint sponsorship between the Federal Government and the private sector.

The first batch training is for software developers who have applications for the Oil & Gas and the Financial Institutions in Nigeria. The two sectors are therefore co-sponsoring the training with the federal government, and providing mentorship for the developers. At the incubation centre, each team will have one Chief Information Officer (CIO) of banks and Oil & Gas companies that will be providing mentorship to them all through the one year incubation period.

It is expected that at the end of one year incubation the developers would be able to come up with applications that will drive the Oil & Gas and the Financial Sectors of the Nigerian economy and could be exported to other countries to address similar situation.

Most of the participants at the selection process said they got the information from internet, while browsing, and others said they were informed through the social media and newspapers. 

Total Automation Concept Limited, one of the teams that shared their views said their software, called the Production Resource Planner (PRP) was designed for Oil and Gas operations to address Well Testing, Metre Proving, Daily Production, Daily Production Received, Utilised Gas, Flared Gas, Daily System Start-ups and Daily Activity Reports in the Oil and Gas sector. “It helps indigenous Oil and Gas companies in generating data for their daily calculations and operations and it is cost effective. It is an alternative to foreign software that is currently running in most multinational companies in Nigeria,” the team said.  
Another team, called the Pica Team, developed control and automation software for the Oil and Gas industry and the manufacturing industry. It is called Operator View Human Machine Interface SCADA Software (HMI)

It addresses safety as it provides safe interface between the machine and the human that is operating the machine, such that the human does not have direct contact with the machine.

Prowork Technology Limited, which is another team, developed software called Prowork Software, which is a project management collaboration solution for businesses. It is a mobile enterprise solution that addresses issues in project management and collaboration.