As part of its efforts to boost information technology ideas among youths, the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has on Tuesday organized a 2-day workshop on ‘Transforming Tech Ideas into Business’ for 20 youths in Kano.
Giving his welcome remarks, the Executive Director of the Centre, Engr. Y.Z Ya’u said in a world of advanced civilization, the existence of tech startups cannot be underrated. As long as there are technology products or services available in the market, tech startups must exist.
“This is a training hub for youths with technological ideas capable of solving societies to come and exhibit their potential”
“We at CITAD will explore more on their ideas, incubate them and support them with more ideas so that their information technology ideas can be deployed to solve societal issues and by extension be marketed to make them self reliant ” Ya’u added.
On his part, CITAD’s Technical Officer, Kamaludeen Umar disclosed that, there are International NGOs that disburse grants for people with technological ideas to assess and develop their ideas towards solving issues across sectors ranging from health, education, agriculture, finance and many others.
“A lot of youths have the ideas but they don’t know how to assess the grants. While others don’t know how to write proposals in order to secure those grants”
“Part of this training aims at packaging the youths on how to write a grant proposal, secure it and adequately step down their tech ideas to our educational, agricultural, financial, health sectors etc that are fast moving with technology” He added.
Kamaludeen further explained that some of the participants in the training have solutions to technological ideas but don’t have tech skills
“What we do is to pair those with tech ideas together with those with technological skills so that they can work together to develop a solution” he noted.
During the workshop, there was an exhibition of a “smart food security system” by a staff of CITAD, Abdurrahman Babatunde. While a 17-year-old Ilyasu A. Alkasim exhibited a “weather & modern farming monitoring drone” prototype.
17-year-old Ilyasu A. Alkasim with his “weather & modern farming monitoring drone” prototype
