₦airaland Forum

I have been seeing stories about the different fire incidents in Abuja and I wanted to share my experience with the fire service in Lagos.

My family lives around the Kosofe Local Government area of Lagos and towards the end of last year, a fire started within the compound. The fire spread to our building and luckily, there was nobody at home when it happened.

When our neighbors saw the fire, they quickly called the Lagos State Emergency number and within about 15 minutes, a fire truck with fire fighters were in front of our house.

The fire fighters were professional. They came with their equipment and they were able to put out the fire before it could spread to other parts of the house.

We thank God that no life was lost and the house is insured so we didn't have to pay much for repairs. Nairalanders, please try to get house insurance if you can afford it.

Lagos Emergency Toll Free Lines: 767 or 112

Lagos State Fire Stations with their phone numbers: https://lagosstate.gov.ng/fire-station-numbers/

Hope this helps someone.

Happy Birthday to your beautiful mum and your handsome father. I wish them many more years.
PS: You look like your Dad

When God has your time... This is what happens

LAGOS, NIGERIA — At first glance, Yaba is like many other parts of Nigeria's sprawling commercial capital: a cacophony of car horns and shouting street vendors, mingling with exhaust fumes and the occasional stench of sewage.

But in between the run-down buildings in this seemingly inauspicious part of Lagos, a city of around 21 million, tech start-ups are taking root and creating a buzz that is drawing international venture capitalists and more established digital firms.

"They're all clustering in Yaba. The momentum is there," said Sim Shagaya, CEO of Konga, which has become one of Africa's biggest online retailers after being set up in 2012. Konga's decision to move in 18 months ago was a major boost for Yaba, which draws on a pool of talent from the nearby University of Lagos and Yaba College of Technology.

African tech centers are a recent phenomenon that mix web business concepts borrowed from other parts of the world with start-ups focused on African problems to create opportunities in areas such as mobile payments and e-commerce. Notable examples are Kenya's 'Silicon Savannah', South Africa's 'Silicon Cape' and Rwanda's 'kLab' in Kigali, but in many instances they struggle to achieve critical mass by giving birth to the few successful start-ups that will in turn attract more talent and money.

However, Yaba also has a growing number of established tech companies, underpinning hopes that the area, where rents are relatively cheap, might breed success.

Konga is just one of several to move away from the lagoon city's affluent island business districts of Victoria Island, Lekki and Ikoyi to the suburb on the Lagos mainland.

Africa Internet Group, backed by Germany's Rocket Internet, South African mobile phone giant MTN and Sweden's Millicom, moved six of its tech firms, including Hellofood and Easy Taxi, to Yaba last December. "We knew the ecosystem of start-ups and ventures here was really thriving," said Guillaume Leblond, managing director of Hellofood, a two-year-old food delivery platform.

Beating the traffic

Even though Yaba's inner city location might constrain its long-term growth, Leblond said the move to Yaba cut commuting times since most employees cannot afford to live in the expensive island business districts and reside on the mainland.

Gesturing to a dozen young adults hunched over laptops in an open plan office, he said most staff were University of Lagos graduates introduced via personal connections.

Investors have taken an interest in several start-ups based in the district in the last few months.

In May, Nigerian hotel booking company hotels.ng got seed funding from the EchoVC Pan-Africa Fund and the Omidyar Network, founded by eBay mastermind Pierre Omidyar.

Then in June, Andela, a Yaba-based company that trains and then outsources software programmers and developers, received financing from Boston-based venture capitalists Spark Capital.

Andela, which launched last year, has so far selected 70 people from more than 12,000 applicants to participate in the programme that co-founder Jeremy Johnson said would, over time, create a bigger pool of developers in Nigeria's workforce.

"We're preparing brilliant young people not only to compete for opportunities in the years ahead, but to build the companies that will transform Africa," he said.

Big market

The potential market size of Africa's most populous nation, makes Nigeria, with around 170 million people, an attractive location.

"From an investor's perspective, Nigeria is so much bigger. The Kenyan market is very small," said Kresten Buch who has invested in tech start-ups in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.

The gross domestic product of Lagos state alone, for example, is bigger than the entire economies of Kenya or Ghana. However, Yaba started life in a similar way to other African tech enclaves in 2010, with one building earmarked as an incubator for talent supported by overseas investors, in this case the Co-Creation Hub (CCHub), backed by the founder of eBay.

The government chipped in with another building in 2013, the Information Technology Developers Entrepreneurship Accelerator (iDEA), for would-be entrepreneurs to get access to docking stations, meeting rooms and mentors.

Google and Microsoft ran coding workshops, while a deal between CCHub, the Lagos state government and local telecoms firm MainOne brought cheap high-speed Internet via fibre optic cable.

Even though it is Africa's biggest economy and top oil producer, Nigeria's Internet speeds and network coverage have lagged behind other countries such as Ghana and Kenya.

But that in itself is an opportunity, with a 2013 report by consultancy McKinsey suggesting that only 1.5 percent of Nigeria's nearly $500 billion economy took place online.

"Nigeria has the advantage of having a very big local market," Buch said. "You can get very big by just looking at Nigeria."

Source: http://www.voanews.com/content/nigeria-tech-enclave-sprimgs-up-in-lagos-suburb/2880350.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+voanews%2FYCdP+%28Voice+of+America%29

Partner Technology Manager, YouTube

We will consider candidates who will be willing to be based in Johannesburg, Nairobi or Lagos.

The Technology Manager job family is responsible for driving product strategy from pilot phase to final delivery, and for managing the overall technical execution and business operation of a product or business vertical. Technology Managers (TMs) are accountable for identifying technology-driven strategies for external products and internal tools (for Sales/Services) and for addressing technology-centric operational issues (such as, automating manual processes to minimize human error) to ensure product/business vertical operational efficiency. TMs are instrumental in improving existing operations, commercializing new solutions, and taking new initiatives from conception to successful deployment in conjunction with other stakeholders.

YouTube's Partner Product Solutions Organization is dedicated to developing and managing the company's largest and most strategic partnerships. We work with teams across YouTube to address our partners' most pressing and complex technology challenges. As a Technical Account Manager, you'll lead deployments, optimize implementations, and handle integrations to build strong, successful, long-term partnerships. You will also strive to solidify YouTube's strategic partnerships across a variety of product lines that include e-commerce, music, devices, sports and many other new initiatives.


To apply: https://www.google.com/about/careers/search#!t=jo&jid=121715001&

Vicben:
This is an inspiring story. You can start from anywhere and with diligence, commitment and focus, you'll be everywhere.

I totally agree, Nigerian entrepreneurs should seek to add value to the society.

I am so proud of Nigerian startups. I hope the story of Iyinoluwa Aboyeji inspires other startup founders in Nigeria .

The startup that's harder to get into than Harvard

Johnson Ejezie was initially daunted by the prospect of moving to Lagos from his home town in Nigeria's south-east.

The polio he contracted at a young age left him with lasting health problems, so he felt vulnerable living in a city where he didn't have any family or friends to lean on.

But what pulled the 26-year-old to Nigeria's bustling metropolis was stronger than his fears -- an invitation to take part in a bootcamp for Andela, a startup which pays young Nigerians to train as programmers and work for international companies.

Andela acts as talent accelerator, scouting for smart and ambitious Nigerians with the potential to work as top-level developers for foreign firms. The ones who pass the rigorous selection process are paid what the company calls an upper middle class Nigerian wage while training. Successful alumni have been placed with for Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft as well as up-and-coming start-ups, all while being based in Nigeria.

Plight for programmers

The idea is the brainchild of two entrepreneurs, American Jeremy Johnson, who made the Forbes' 30 under 30 list last year, and Nigerian Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, selected as one of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers in 2012.

"Andela began after my friend and mentor Jeremy Johnson visited Nairobi in 2013 and saw how a lack of career paths for young people was contributing to Africa's youth unemployment," says Aboyeji.

"At about the same time, I had spent a year and a half in Lagos exploring new models of education that could raise the bar and tackle Nigeria's chronic youth unemployment problem," he adds.

The pair put their heads together and noticed that while young Nigerians struggled to get jobs, tech roles in United States were hard to fill: "Even at $100,000 per year, Jeremy could not find a developer for his last company. That was when we decided to begin recruiting our first class."

Elite recruits

With an acceptance rate of 1% Andela is arguably one of the most selective training programs in the world. In comparison, Harvard admits 6% of applicants and Princeton 7.4%. The training is four years long and starts with an online application, after which candidates take aptitude and skills tests.

Those who make it to the next round have a face-to-face interview, and then undertake a two week bootcamp -- the final selection stage. There, aspiring developers are taught how to build web applications and they are assessed on the speed at which they learn as well as their soft skills.

Aboyeji doesn't sugar-coat the fact that the selection process is grueling: "We are looking for brilliant young people who are potential leaders, and who have the grit and perseverance to get through a very tough program," he says.

Tech talent

So far 15,000 people applied for the scheme and Andela started training its first class of 100 developers in June of last year. The company is based in New York and Nigeria, a country chosen partially because its status as Africa's most populous nation means it offers a wide pool of talent.

"The primary and secondary education system remains strong here, but the youth population is growing very fast which makes the problem of youth unemployment chronic," says Aboyeji. The strong emphasis of earning while learning is reminiscent of the apprenticeship system, something that Andela founders readily embrace. "We believe there is only so much you can learn in the classroom. But with practical work experiences, you can translate learning into habits that will make you a true professional," Aboyeji says.

He adds that in today's globally connected world, it makes little difference that the companies young Nigerian programmers work for are based thousands of miles away: "With a reliable Internet connection, a world-class developer can add value remotely from wherever in the world they happen to be."

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/24/africa/andela-start-up-nigeria/index.html

Nigeria on the path to greatness

The place looks so rowdy. It doesn't look like there is order in the house.

Skoopy:
We never do last minute reading, we study from the first day of the semester because it's quite demanding being an engineer.

Engineers work so hard in and out of school, you read until you stop practicing.

I still read alot.

I waited till the last minute to do some assignments in school not because I didn't start studying on time but because deadlines may be clashing. Sometimes we may have 2 or 4 assignments or tests at the same time and this can cause backlogs while studying.