The Federal Ministry of Communications Innovation and Digital Economy has said Nigeria is making significant strides in nurturing its future tech talent through the Build-A-Thon initiative, which has benefited 1500 children from Imo, Ogun, and Borno States.

The Ministry highlighted the Build-A-Thon initiative as some of the technology programmes of President Bola Tinubu’s administration, in the first-year scorecard document seen by Technology Times.

The Build-A-Thon initiative, the Ministry said, continued as promised by Dr. ‘Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications Innovation and Digital Economy, since its announcement in December 2023, to provide immersive training to students across the federation.

In fulfillment of this promise, a total of 1500 children between the ages of 13 to 18, in teams of ten from 150 public secondary schools in Borno, Ogun, and Imo states, received training to build prototypes and solutions to everyday problems within a fun environment across different sectors including health, education, and aviation.

Prior to this, a set of 1500 students from Owerri, Abeokuta, and Maiduguri in January 2024 participated in hands-on learning experiences while acquiring skills such as the use of Raspberry Pi, embedded systems, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Build-A-Thon initiative was designed to stimulate the next generation of tech talent to continue the journey towards advancing the technology industry.

According to Tijani, the 1500 children were introduced to the physical hardware side of technology combined with the soft skills through embedded systems.

This initiative, similar to the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme of the Ministry, is geared towards the President’s Renewed Hope agenda to improve the digital sector of the federation.