On Thursday March 22, 2018, critical Stakeholders in the CodeLagos project met at the Herbert Macaulay Library, Yaba for the first Stakeholders’ session for 2018. The aim of the session was to take a cursory look at the activities of CodeLagos in 2017; to evaluate the project’s implementation process, impact made as well as challenges faced and lessons learnt.
At the session was the Special Adviser to the Governor on Education, Mr. Obafela Bank-Olemoh, leading the team of Government officials of the Lagos State Ministry of Education including the Tutor-Generals Permanent secretary of the 6 Educational Districts. Also present were representatives of the implementation partners of the project, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and CodeLagos Delivery Partners whose responsibility is to supervise the actual implementation of the training programme across the various centres in the State.
Mr. Obafela Bank-Olemoh while making his presentation at the session disclosed that over 15,000 individuals have been trained with the programme’s Coding Education Framework. “This number includes primary and secondary students as well as other Lagos residents who partook in the Out-of-School programme. So far we have 197 coding centres across the State”, Mr. Bank-Olemoh stated.
At the session, the 16 CodeLagos Delivery partners also took turns to present to the audience their respective score cards in 2017 highlighting their accomplishments, challenges and lessons learnt.
The Tutor-Generals, Permanent Secretaries (TGPSs) of the Education Districts in Lagos State also lauded the initiative attesting to the visible impact it is making on the students as well as the schools in their various districts. They encouraged Governor Akinwunmi Ambode to continue his good works and pledged their support for the successful implementation of the next phase of the CodeLagos project.
About plans for 2018, The Special Adviser disclosed that all is set for the roll out of the next phase of the programme. In his words; “We will start classes for the Out-Of-School programme in April. Our target is to have rolled out 5000 In-school centres and 50 Out-Of-School centres by December 2018. “We plan to have the first-ever CodeLagos CodeWeek in June 2018 and also run a CodeLagos Hackathon in November 2018”
“His Excellency, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode gave us a mandate to prepare Lagosians for the future economy. I believe we can educate one million people. If we can change Lagos State, we can change Nigeria. If we can change Nigeria, we can change Africa. If we can change Africa, we can invariably change the world!” Mr. Bank-Olemoh affirmed.
The representatives of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Nigeria later explained in detail to the Delivery Partners the implementation process and performance evaluation template for CodeLagos activities in 2018.
