Graduates and young people in the South Eastern Nigeria may not have the full arsenal of experience and opportunities to compete in the new playground of tech and digital entrepreneurship.
Their counterparts in the South-West clearly have an edge. From an information overload to a plethora of institutions and partnerships for certification courses and pilot programmes in Ai and Machine learning, from seed capital opportunities from VCs to mentorship in incubation hubs, an idea processed to a minimum viable product (MVP) is more likely to raise a new tech billionaire in the Lagos hub than anywhere else.
Of course, if a Mark Zuckerberg, or Jack Dorsey shows up, he is more likely to do stuff in a University of Lagos, an Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife than an Abia State Polytechnic, Aba. This is the advantage conferred by location, location, location.
But that is changing, in a big way, for lots of technology-driven small and medium businesses across the country. At Genesys Tech Hub, Enugu, a purpose-built nexus for opportunity, tech, funding, know-how and young people is creating a new future. Founder,
Genesys Tech Hub and Managing Director of Tenece Group, Mr. Kingsley Eze, shared the Genesys hub’s vision – to build a veritable start-up ecosystem capable of solving some of our Nation’s biggest problems across Fintech, entertainment, education and fashion. His confidence is in the young Nigerians developing world-class solutions right from the city of Enugu!
During a visit to the hub by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, he had remarked, “Of all the Tech Hubs I’ve seen, this is certainly the largest.” With the state-of-the-art facilities available at the hub, the Genesys objective clearly has started contributing to driving economic productivity in Nigeria through capacity building, entrepreneurship and job creation. The VP saw first-hand, the various initiatives of the hub including the paid learning and development program – Codename: Learnable; The Startup Incubation program – Genesys StartZone and the Co-working space and product development – The Agora.
According to a statement on the Tenece website, “Genesys was created to serve as a hub of learning and innovation in the area of digital design, to provide support for startups in the tech industry to gain access to markets and resources, to become the nucleus of a community of talented individuals whose innovations will fuel a tech revolution in West Africa.
In the past four years, Genesys has graduated over 252 young software and product developers, trained over 900 tech enthusiasts, funded 6 startups and supported over 35 SMEs. As part of its development programme, they also assist interns secure job placement with companies to further give them the needed industry experience.”