The Evolution of the Nigerian Tech Community
In 2008, in my private room somewhere in Kuala Lumpur, I was all on my own and it was indeed a big moment in my life. I had access to the Internet that I never had in Nigeria and was streaming Youtube without worrying about bandwidth.
I am a technology enthusiast and one of the best things that happened to me then was to gain access to Google technology videos, resources and so on. This had a big impact in my life and has taught me a lot of things that I leverage today.
One of the most important things I learned was about the culture of “sharing and collaboration” that existed in Silicon Valley. It struck me to understand that a major differentiator between a developed ecosystem and non-developed one is the culture of “sharing and collaboration”. Since then, I have developed an interest in community development and participation. It was a tough journey in my career as a programmer, getting like minds to share and work on things. I did most of it all on my own.
In 2009, I came to know about the Google Technology User Group and with my passion to drive the culture of sharing and collaboration, I saw it as a big opportunity to start a Google Technology User Group in Nigeria. I applied to start GTUG Nigeria and the process was completed on the 23rd of July 2009, the first GTUG in Africa.

Back in Nigeria, I hosted the first GTUG Meetup in Abuja on the 13th of February, 2010 to introduce GTUG and Google Technologies (Google Maps, Youtube APIs, Google Web Toolkit, App Engine, Android, etc).


Soon after that, Google hosted the G-Nigeria Day 2010 between February 18th — 20th. I met Nyimbi Odero, Google Lead, English Speaking West Africa, and discussed on the role of Google in building the community.



Around that time, GTUG Lagos came on board, (headed by Emeka Afigbo, who would later become the Program Manager at Google, Sub Saharan Africa) and GTUG Nigeria became GTUG Abuja.
Soon after the G-Nigeria Day, Aniedi, was in Abuja for our 2nd meetup.
The comments he made after G-Nigeria was really powerful:
“I’m fully committed to this initiative & I hope to see “Out of Africa, Something New” in the nearest future.”



It is not surprising that Aniedi today has succeeded Emeka’s role as the Program Manager, Google Sub-Saharan Africa.
His interest in community participation brought him down to Abuja for the GTUG meetup to contribute and check out what is happening out there.
The power of community cannot be over-emphasized. GTUGs (and Google) have played a very important role in promoting the “ecosystem”. (I am not triggering the continuation of the debate about “ecosystem” :) )
GTUG-Nigeria was indeed inspiring and has sparked the community. Hanson Johnson the lead for GDG Uyo, was in one of our Abuja GTUG meetups and I recall how keen he was about the group and he soon started GTUG Uyo and has never slowed down.

The maiden edition of GTUG Uyo took place on the 5th of November, 2011 and was very colourful. I was there to make the keynote speech on Google Technologies on behalf of Emeka.






The Nigeria-GTUG community quickly grew to 9 groups including Akure, Calabar, OAU-IFE, and Owerri.

In May, 2012, GTUG was re-branded to Google Developer Group (GDG). During the transition time GDG Kano, led by Usman Ibrahim came on board and today, there are 32 GDGs in Nigeria which is number 3 in the world after the United States and Brazil.
[Update]
I was at the GDG Kano DevFest 2013 in collaboration with the GDG BUK which witnessed over 200 persons in attendance.





The GDG Lagos Conference held last month (July 28th, 2017) was a blast with over 600 developers. Adewale of Techpoint.ng has captured the moment accurately.

The #forLoopAbuja event held on Saturday (26th August), with over 170 attendees was also a good sign that the community is growing.


ICT, A Future for Nigeria
I am optimistic that sooner or later ICT will make an impact in the Nigerian GDP similar to what ICT is contributing in India. The momentum generated so far in the tech community is exciting. We have seen vibrant meetups including Laravel Nigeria, forLoop Nigeria, and Andela Learning Community making giant strides in building the community. Tech hubs, summer camps, etc have also sprung up in recent times which all play a very important role in the future of ICT in Nigeria.
The next important thing to pay attention to is the quality of the output. Through mentorship, we’d be able to produce “world class engineers”. This is Prosper Otemuyiwa’s gospel which he preaches daily.
Connecting these young talents with the industry for practical experience is also very key and internship programs such as what Hotels.ng is doing are great avenues for producing world class engineers.
At FlexiSAF, most of our engineers, out of the 18 we have so far, interned with us and today they are “world class engineers”.
It is an exciting time to live and I am keen to see the impact this movement is going to make. Let’s keep the ball rolling.
