NetDragon Websoft Holdings Limited, a Chinese leader in building internet communities, says it is looking closely at learning technology opportunities in Nigeria under plans to expand its African footprints.
According to a company statement, NetDragon’s senior management team recently visited Nigeria to explore the opportunity to support the country’s digitalization in education with the help of the company’s learning technologies.
Nigeria’s senior government officials, including Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Minister of State for Education Anthony Onwuka and Minster of Communications Abdur-Raheem Adebayo Shittu were the representatives for the country in this event, the Chinese company says.
NetDragon says it has committed to assisting in Nigeria’s construction of “Three Platforms and One Centre” – national education resources public service platform, national teaching community network platform, national digital talent training platform and national future education experience centre, to support the country’s basic education, lifelong education and future education initiatives.
During the visit, NetDragon and the Nigerian government have agreed to jointly release the “African Digital Education Initiative” in the near future.
NetDragon says it has committed to assisting in Nigeria’s construction of “Three Platforms and One Centre” – national education resources public service platform, national teaching community network platform, national digital talent training platform and national future education experience centre, to support the country’s basic education, lifelong education and future education initiatives. Dejian Liu, Founder and Chairman of NetDragon, was also awarded “Nigerian Sustainable Development Goals Ambassador”.
The Chinese company says that prior to this visit, Nigeria’s senior government officials had visited NetDragon’s headquarter in Fuzhou, China to understand and experience the company’s education products and their integration with VR, AR and AI technologies.
A memorandum of cooperation was signed by the two parties during the visit. The two parties are now moving forward to sign the official cooperation agreements, namely “Agreement of Cooperation between Nigeria and NetDragon” and “The Framework Agreement for Initiative of Digital Education in Africa”.
The unveiling ceremony of “N-Power Junior Smart Classroom Project” headed by the National Social Investment Office of Nigeria, which is a project that aims to improve the technical knowledge and skills of elementary and junior high school students, including programming, computer graphics design, robotics applications, networking and basic engineering applications.
The company says it decided to donate a smart classroom in Abuja equipped with its products, including Promethean interactive panel, Edmodo, 101 Student Pad and VR Mysticraft, with the smart classroom to serve as a use-case demonstration classroom for UNICEF and UNESCO.
On the back of the success of this visit, NetDragon plans to promote the construction of smart classrooms in over 100 districts outside of capital city Abuja in Nigeria with plans to explore similar partnerships within Africa, with Kenya being the next destination, the company says.
Dejian Liu says “there are imbalances in educational resources around the world, not only in hardware investments, but also in allocation of ‘soft’ resources. NetDragon, together with the Nigerian government, released the ‘African Digital Education Initiative’, hoping that the wisdom of Chinese Internet companies can help African students, and enable children from more regions to experience the fun of learning from advanced technologies.”
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