South South Roots and Android development with Andela and Udacity

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techphc

4 min readJul 18, 2017

I remember early this year when I saw the link on Facebook that Andela was partnering with Google to bring the android program to more developers around the country, I was very excited and with the fact that the post was made by Prosper Otemuyiwa. I registered for it and totally forgot about the program until I got a mail from them later that month or thereabout.

I have been a Java developer for quite sometime and even developed a desktop application which a group of students used for the election of their executives in school, but at the time, android acceptance was a little slow thou I knew I had to join the moving train early enough. I surfed the internet and watched several videos on Java development and also tried building some desktop App but I wanted to build for the next generation, and I saw that vision in the ALC program.

Well, I was shocked when I got a call from Gino Osahon that he had been chosen as the facilitator. For those that don’t know, Gino Osahon is the Google developer Group Lead for Port Harcourt. He has always tried to introduce me to the Android platform for quite sometime but I have been in and out of conviction (moments of doubts), he told me that I should try it out that its going to be easy but trust me, I kept that under the rug. Letting you in on further details of this Gino’s call, is mentioning that he said I will also help him with the program; I was wowed to be part of such experience- facilitate a program for Andela. I was hyper.

The “D-day” was here and on my way to the venue I met a dude on transit and guess what? He was heading my way. This was fun: meeting people and connecting on a large scale with people in tandem with one’s passion. The event Hall was full and OlotuSquare was the venue and D-line was the location. The number was huge, the expectation was high and the program commenced with me being glued to my first row seat ready for the action.

The materials arrived late but the expectation was still strong and the turnout was massive. People introduced themselves and we found out that most of the peeps that came for the programs where all newbies. Like infants eager for “breast-milk”, newbies were pumped, salivating to learn how to code on the android platform and that was the motivation for the steady turnout by the team involved in the planning and execution.

I was unable to join the slack group but I followed the trend on Whatsapp. I felt the energy Andela brought to Ph Tech scene, there was always messages to read, codes to debug and connections to make. There was also small and mini meet ups around the city of Port Harcourt, the best and fastest way to join the trend is just to state your location on the group and you’ll see different people from several locations trying to make you one of their members, was a great feeling — Edo boy feeling like a “hot-cake”.

The day that I will never forget is the last day. The day of the app demo or let’s call it demo day for the ALC PH. Tension was lit and whatsapp group was quiet. Well, judgment day is usually a day of palpitating hearts when one needs control instead of an autopilot which(may) send the beating heart to apprehension. Peeps tried to focus on the activity to evade any disaster, hence they had to debug their apps in order to display something awesome. I was amazed when Gino said we would handle the review process together. I was glad he put me on board and believe me, I learn’t a lot on that day. The meet up went well, the attendees presented cool apps and displayed several concepts — I enjoyed every bit of it and one thing kept ringing in my head, which is worth noting and that is: “Life is a journey, a journey where learning never ends.”

PS: I remembered a quote from one of the mails sent to me from Andela “it’s also worth noting that your access to the Udacity Scholarship course content is valid till the 31st July, 2017. “ so I continued the Android journey with the second course on Udacity and that was what my project was based on ”my WA-ZO-BIA app that teaches people four basic Nigerian languages and I am really excited that I could drop out an app at the end of the program.

I really thank Andela and Google for the collabration and also Udacity for the materials. Well, the final thing I have to say here is; guy watch out for my billion dollar app. The link to my wa-zo-bia repo is linked below.