10 Graduates of the Jim Ovia Foundation Receives 5M Each To Start Up a Software Development Company

The Chairman of Visafone and former MD of Zenith Bank International, Mr. Jim Ovia has demonstrated the spirit of a Techie lover through his generous donations to the 10 successful graduates of his youth foundation called the "Jim Ovia Foundation" Before now, I wrote a post on "Software Incubation Centers to be Ready in March, 2012 Says Nigeria’s Information and Communication Technology Minister" in which the Minister, Mrs. Omobola Johnson declared open the Jim Ovia Foundation. More than 350 young people who are students of tertiary institutions of learning and young graduates participated in the programme which lasted for one week in Lagos last week.

Mr. Jim Ovia during an interactive session with newsmen at the venue of the event said that “10 participants who emerged successful at the end of the whole training with the best certification qualifications and best business ideas will access N5 million each to ensure that they become full blown software entrepreneurs”.

The programme tagged “Developing Nigeria’s Next Generation of ICT Entrepreneurs” was sponsored by the Jim Ovia Foundation in partnership with Google, IBM, Visafone, Microsoft, QT and TLC Solutions.

The Jim Ovia Foundation was power-packed as the giant IT firms in the likes of Google, Microsoft, QT, CNBC and IBM teamed up with the foundation to provide free software training for the 350 young people. The provided practical training was in mobile web software, hardware, Android apps, Java, QT, CSS3 and HTML5.

The training also covered apps for mobile marketing, gaming, e-readers, gaming advertising, VoD and sales forces.

Mr Ovia said the aim of the training was to create an eco-system of advanced professional Android mobile application developers to take advantage of the emerging market in Nigeria and across Africa.