NCS Begins Mentorship to Promote Technology Innovation

Emma Okonji

Nigeria Computer Society (NCS), the umbrella body for all Information Technology (IT) professionals in Nigeria, has commenced mentorship of selected groups of software developers, who will in turn develop world-class solutions that would be promoted within and outside of Nigeria by the NCS.

NCS, through its Technology Innovation Programme, recently assembled some selected teams of tech developers, as well as mentors, to its second boot camp in Lagos, where the team members were guided on how to develop globally acceptable solutions, through a special mentorship.

Giving details of the programme, the President of NCS, Prof. Adesina Sodiya said the NCS Technology Innovation Programme was designed to groom startups with ideas, while NCS would help in nurturing the ideas to a world-class standard, and turn the ideas into solutions that would be ready for global market.

According to Sodiya, “NCS started by advertising the programme and called for entries. Over 70 entries were received, and the entries were shortlisted to five teams of not more than three in each team. After the short-listing, NCS organised the first boot camp for them, where they were all trained on how to develop ideas and how to turn their ideas into a complete solution that NCS can market within and outside of Nigeria. The plan of NCS is to nurture the ideas to complete solutions that will be globally commercialised.

“The five teams on ground, represent five unique solutions that will be developed into viable and commercial solutions. NCS provides N50,000 per month to each team and we have assigned mentors to them who are assisting them in developing and marketing their products. We are hoping that the five products will make it to the market, but even if at the end of the day, we have only one product that made it to the international market, then that will be a plus for NCS and for the Nigerian nation.”

So NCS is part of the product development and will co-own the products and ensure the products get national and international attention. We may sell off the solution, or partner with organisations that will be ready to co-own the solution and keep the developers in their companies to further develop the solution, Sodiya added.

During the second boot camp in Lagos, each of the teams was allowed to make short presentation about their solutions, state the purpose for which the solution was designed, what the solution seeks to promote and the specific challenge that each solution seeks to address and how they could scale up such solutions. Some of the teams were able to explain the challenges faced so far in developing their solutions and how to tackle the challenges and make the solutions acceptable to interested investors.

One of the mentors and renowned software developer, Mr. Chris Uwaje, gave some useful tips to each of the teams after their presentation, and emphasised the need for each team to infuse Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their solutions for easy marketing outside of Nigeria.