By CHIMA AKWAJA,VoguePay Nigeria, a leading online payment gateway has declared it willingness to help Nigerian undergraduates in Nigerian universities develop local content applications that would support the $12 billion Nigeria software market currently dominated by foreign software vendors.Michael Simeon, VoguePays chief executive officer, who disclosed at the just concluded national conference of the Nigerian Association of Computer Science Students (NACOSS), an umbrella body for all students studying Computer Science related courses in universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education in Nigeria.He said that it is expensive to depend on foreign software to meet our software needs in Nigeria as it will cost an estimated $12 billion. Hence, there is need to invest in new generation of software developers and businesses to build local content. To support this move, VoguePay Nigeria, a leading online payment gateway sponsored the recently, he said.He added that unlike most hackathons which are designed to help the sponsor-company to fix challenges of their product, this event was strictly not self-serving. Before announcing the winners of the competition, the chief technology officer (CTO) of VoguePay, Leke Ojikutu said he was excited that all the 75 applications received for the competition addressed real needs that can be turned to viable businesses.He challenged the students to learn the basics of software development as this will help them to grasp new technologies. He said it is time to give back to the community and raise new generation of software entrepreneurs. The event held at the University of Uyo from July 31-August 4, 2017, had in attendance the vice chancellor, Prof. Enefiok Essien and other representatives of the school and state government.The keynote address was delivered by Daniel Steeves, board advisor to VoguePay and a global IT veteran with more than 30 years experience. One of the key events of the conference was the business and idea hack sponsored by VoguePay to reward students and developers who are building e-commerce and other software technology that can impact and improve various sectors of Africas economy.The winning teams from University of Nnamdi Azikwe (Unizik), Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) and University of Ibadan (UI) won cash prizes and business support from VoguePay.com and eStoreSMS.com while other competitors were awarded consolation prizes for their presentation. The national president of NACOSS, Emmanuel Gregory Essiet was full of gratitude as he highly commended VoguePay and eStoreSMS noting that their sponsorship helped him to convene the best conference for the student body till date.Wole Ogunlade, the companys head of digital media and strategy noted that the VoguePay/NACOSS competition is part of a strategic 5-year partnership that the company is pursuing to help raise awareness about local talents on software development among students of tertiary institutions. He challenged other corporate organizations to pursue similar initiatives as part of their corporate social responsibility.The post $12bn Software Market: VoguePay, Varsities Move Entrench Local Contentappeared first on leadership.ng.
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