By Prince Osuagwu & Emma Elebeke

Nokia woke up last week to take the African mobile space by storm. First it prepared the stage for more than 200 of Africa’s top policy makers, developers, entrepreneurs and private enterprises to engage in three days of intense debate at the Open Innovation Africa Summit (OIAS) in Nairobi, Kenya.

The OIAS is put together to stimulate discussion about the role of entrepreneurship, innovation and ICTs in Africa, not just among participants, but also to explore the transformative innovations necessary to successfully address many of the challenges facing Africa today. The summit is also meant to empower African thought leaders to find ways to spur technological innovation within their own local context.

Here at home, Nokia partnered a Lagos-based firm, the Co-Creation Hub, CCHub to discover and empower young local software developers. That effort gave birth to no fewer than ten Nigerian youth developers who stand to have their own businesses grown by Nokia’s local and international expertise.

Meanwhile, the company’s partnership with Nigeria’s Co-Creation Hub, a social  innovation centre in the heart of Lagos, saw about 10 local Nigerian software developers emerge, last week. The project, tagged Nokia and Co-Creation Growth Academy is a talent hunt oriented initiative aimed at accelerating top Nigerian mobile software companies in growing their companies on regional and international levels.

The beneficiaries of the academy programme in return, are expected to use their grown businesses to boost and bring value to the Nigeria software market and by extension the ICT industry in general.

The program comes in three parts; Training, Development and Launch of world class mobile apps for Nokia platform. Selected participants will undergo hands-on, structured and technical training to actualize your ideas.

A global mobile software house from Finland, Futurice, with expertise in mobile application development and user driven design will have face to face sessions with the participants in Nigeria and also provide constant online support and mentoring to the participants during the Growth Academy.

Unveiling beneficiaries in Lagos, Head of Ecosystem and Developer Experience, Nokia West Africa, Teemu Kiijarvi said ” Nigeria has a thriving and growing mobile software start-up scene with a lot of potential for growth. For Nokia, the project is a way of boosting Nigeria software market and growing the mobile industry. It is our flagship project and we are determined to train young and budding developers, not only in Nigeria but also in Africa in general.

He said that the project is a continuous one that will be recruiting companies that will in return hiring developers in Nigeria, saying that Nigerian market is growing so fast that it is easy for any aspiring enterpreanuer to succeed if given the right support.

”it is about creativity and social innovation. The beneficiaries will learn how to do both local and global business,” he added.