As Osinbajo wants partnership to address challenge of out-of-school children
US-based Google Global Services has proposed to train 56 million students in Nigeria this year through the online safety initiative.
Google’s director of government affairs and public policy, Mr. Doron Avni, stated when he led the company’s delegation on a courtesy visit to the vice president, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo in the Presidential Villa, Abuja yesterday.
Avni who spoke on behalf of the delegation, described Osinbajo as an excellent partner whose support had enabled the organisation record remarkable success in Nigeria.
“I am happy to report to you that so far we have trained more than five million people. Most important is the fact that out of those five million, three million are Nigerians.
“With the collaboration that we have with the ministry of education, we have now integrated some of Google’s curriculum on online safety into the school’s curriculum. So, we will be reaching 56 million students in Nigeria this year,” he said.
He added that the company’s target of training up to 10 million people in Africa by 2022 was realisable.
Osinbajo, in his remarks, had said the federal government will support any partnership that addresses literacy and educational challenges, including the problem of out of school children and girl child education in Nigeria.
“It might help if we begin to look at something more in the area of literacy type skills because really, we are looking at how to expand the whole scope of education especially education for girls.
“So, the question really is how we can use technology to make it easier for girls, in particular, to go to school, because if we somehow bring education to their doorsteps, it might take care of some of the problems around taking them out of their home environment,” he said.
According to the vice president, “for us, our education mandate is so crucial.”
Explaining how the federal government is partnering with different stakeholders, Prof. Osinbajo said: “It is an interesting partnership – business, government and civil society working together. We are already looking forward to a lot of the great work that will be done.
“All of that fits into our education agenda which partly aims at addressing the out of school children and the girl child education issues.”
Also yesterday, Osinbajo while speaking to a delegation from Procter & Gamble led by its president for Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, Mr. Suran Magesvaran, said the federal government’s initiatives in the past four years would boost local industries and make them more competitive on the African continent.
“We are concerned about making sure that our industries are competitive by fixing power and other infrastructure. We are looking at port operations, trying to connect the port to the Lagos-Kano rail line,” he said.
For his part, Magesvaran announced the company’s plans to set up a new multi-million dollar plant in Nigeria as part of its new investments in Africa.
