The 32-
year-old tech enterpreneur surprisingly made a
sudden visit and inspection of activities at the
Co-Creation Hub, Yaba Lagos.
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, Vanguard 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 Vanguard 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.” Source: Vanguard
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