Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode on Friday formally unveiled the State Digital Library, reiterating his administration’s commitment to providing access to education for all.
The governor, who was represented by Secretary to the State Government, Mr. Tunji Bello, said the decision to unveil a first-of-its-kind digital library is to provide access to educational materials through the collection of digital content via the online portal.
He emphasized that it would complement the quest for achieving the Lagos dream of becoming Africa’s model megacity and 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)” he said.
Ambode also stated that “the contents also include quality research papers from Lagos State tertiary institutions covering a wide range of topics digitized for the platform in various forms such as vocational videos, entrepreneurship contents, creatively presented history lessons and online courses on coding”.
He said the “Code Lagos” and “Digital Library” projects were initiated as part of the Government’s efforts to make the State the next technology hub in Africa, stressing that the Digital Library programme is 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, a majority of whom will access the internet through a mobile device.
He, therefore, urged students, researchers and everyone that is interested in knowledge acquisition to make use of the platform which can be accessed nationwide.
Earlier in his remarks, the Special Adviser to the Governor, Mr. Obafela Bank-Olemoh said that 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 is already yielding the desired result with the library at Herbert Macaulay, Yaba and the one at Isolo already taken up by corporate organisations.
The digital library online portal – “www.educatelagos.com” – was unveiled at the event which took place at the Landmark Event Center, Victoria Island and was attended by members of the Organised Private Sector and the Diplomatic Corps. – The News.
