 |
| Mark Zuckerberg |
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. Facebook Founder, Mark
Zuckerberg with 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, our reporters 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 our reporter 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.”
No comments:
Post a Comment