By Tayo Joseph Lagos, Nigeria
Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode has formally unveiled the State Digital Library, reiterating his administration’s commitment to provide access to education for all.
Governor Ambode, who spoke through the Secretary to the State Government, Mr. Tunji Bello at the launch of the Lagos State Digital Library held at the Landmark Event Center, Victoria Island, said the unveiling of the first of its kind digital Library was part of the vision of providing access to education.
According to the Governor, the access envisioned would be through collection and curation of digital content by online portal.
He said that the development, apart from complementing the quest for achieving Lagos dream of becoming Africa’s model megacity, would also help in transforming the State to a global economic and financial Hub.
“The digital library will provide a repository of contents which include 2,000 study aids on core subjects from primary to senior secondary school curriculum, over 1,600 tutorials, instructional videos and selected e-books for primary to SS3 approved texts, brief history of Lagos State, online forum, podcasts and exam-mate (A Test Resource).
“The contents also include quality research papers from Lagos State Tertiary Institutions covering a wide variety of topics digitized for the platform in various forms such as vocational videos, entrepreneurship contents, creatively presented history lessons and online courses on coding.
“This portal will be accessible via internet connection on a range of devices, from desktop computers to feature phones regardless of location, age or social economic status,” he said.
He said as part of the government’s efforts to make the State the next technology hub in Africa, the “Code Lagos” and “Digital Library” projects were initiated, adding that the Digital Library programme was the first of its kind in the State and one of the largest learning platforms in Africa.
The Governor noted that based on statistics available, Africa is expected to reach 500 million internet users by 2020, majority of whom will access internet through a mobile device.
He, therefore, urged students, researchers and everyone interested in knowledge acquisition to make use of the platform which can be accessed from any part of the State and country.
Earlier in his remarks, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Education, Mr Obafela Bank-Olemoh said part of the innovation of the present administration was the introduction of “library initiative” whereby private organisations can adopt a library and improve it.
According to him, the initiative was already yielding fruits with the library at Herbert Macaulay, Yaba and the one at Isolo already taken up by corporate organisations.
The representative of the Governor later logged on to the “www.educatelagos.com” portal to formally unveil the programme at the event which also attracted members of the Organised Private Sector and the Diplomatic Corps.
