By Charles Mgbolu

Nigeria’s participation in this year’s Google code jam competitions both in the African and world categories may no longer be the usual humiliating experience.

Search giant, Google through her technical programme manager for sub-sahara Africa; Miss Ego Obi has recently informed IT correspondents at her office in Lagos that a developer training programme was already underway to give the nation’s code jam breakers better fighting chance at the annual competitions.

Google’s code jam competition which began in 2003, every year brings computer students and developers from across the globe togeher as they struggle to break software codes and algorithms designed by the brightest minds on the planet. Nigerian competitors have not fared well in the contest, but another initiative to boost chances may be in the offing.

According to Miss Obi: “The developer programme is supposed to be focused on building the developer community. There will be a number of sessions and there is actually something that has been kicked off called the Google technology review. Through the G-Talk, we can actually be focusing on the event and workshop. If you think about infrastructure and technical expertise, we use several programmes to develop both students as well as ICT teams.”

She said further that Google had teamed up with Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC), an institution in the US to focus on all the universities currently being worked with in the University Access Programme UAP launched last October with the University of Nigeria, Nsuka and which she now says has spread to “a number of universities” in the country.

Under the sustainability mission, Google insists it wants to help “strengthen the developer community in Africa and empower the next generation of developers and working with universities and raise the level of curriculum and encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship”.

Miss Obi said “We have asked all the students in all the participating universities to apply for the ambassadorial programme and that have actually closed last Friday. The benefits include one academic year of training and they would help host three to four events, they will be equipped with skills that can have an immediate impact on the and employability and entrepreneurship and we will use them to sustain the Google Africa strategy. The talent outreach and reward team are working on a huge drive to improve number of ambassadors and are beginning to put things in perspective, where they had five persons, they plan to make it to fifteen.