E-Business
Microsoft & Journey to Nigeria’s Education Transformation Via LP+365 Solution
Learning is not a destination nor can it be solved by just the introduction of technology, but it is indeed a journey, as emphasized by Jordan Belmonte, education programs manager, Microsoft Nigeria at the recent launch of the anticipated LP+365 learning solution by Microsoft in partnership with Dynamiss Digital Learning Solutions Limited, a teaching and learning digital solutions company and Learning Possibilities, the largest learning solutions provider in United Kingdom.
Belmonte went ahead to remind the pious gathering comprising of education scholars, teachers, technology developers, government functionaries, among others: “A human behavior that involves constant transformation and evolution in which multiple stakeholders need to come together, obviously the student themselves, the parents also have a role to play, teachers, educational institutions, and the local community – it’s a very important journey in which we all embark upon together – And Microsoft sees it’s self as one of the partners/players in furthering this journey”.
Here, learning prettily focused on the learning outcome is surly inevitable, because such outcome has a lot to do with helping individuals, students to realize their true potential.
Obviously and as she would put it, “to make sure that they find a job, employment and opportunity in life that accomplishes their passion and at the same time ensures their communities and economy as a whole works”.
As a country, we are in a crossroad, a zigzag occasioned by soaring rate of Unemployment.
With unemployment up to 8.2% of the population. A disproportionate number of those unemployed are youth as it was reported recently that almost 18% of youths between the ages of 15 and 24 were unemployed. Yet at the same time employers and companies tell us that there is a short supply of skilled and talented people!
Yet, about 33.7 million out of 173.6 million people in Nigeria aged 15-35 are youths.
Of the about 57 million out of school children globally, 10.5 million of them are Nigerian children, making Nigeria the country with the second highest concentration of out of school children globally.
There is no need flogging ourselves for missing the industrial revolution, however, posterity will judge us should we remain ‘idle’ in the face of, “Globally, job opportunities are shifting away from manufacturing economies to information economies that services largest sector of the 25 largest economies”.
Microsoft aptly captures the trend thus, “We have shifted to an information society that is based on Information economies… It used to be important for people to be able to calculate complex math in their head or to know how to memorize and repeat an action. But most of those things can now be completed through technological compensation. This means our global job market has changed. Services, Information Technology and E-Commerce are some of the fastest growing economies”.
And the biggest impact of this shift is what has happens to the occupations available. Most jobs today are unrecognizable to what they were 15, 10 or even 5 years ago. So true!
The International Data Corporation reported in 2014 that “More than 50% of today’s jobs require some technology skills, which percentage will increase to 77% in the next decade. And within ten years, 60% of the jobs that will be available are ones that don’t even exist today”.
Aside computer jobs or ICT jobs at tech companies like Microsoft, the fact is that majority of the jobs already require some degree of understanding of technology, everyday jobs in the community, bankers, store clerks, doctors, civil servants, name it!
Unfortunately, the gap is just too big without the majority of classrooms in Nigeria not inspiring and becoming more and more obsolete; complete opposite of today’s working style.
Technology induced system is the only way out of an education system that still relies on the old formula of memorize, regurgitate and flush and caters to a learning environment that more closely mirrors the modern workplace and sets student up for professional success.
That is why we at Nigeria CommunicationsWeek believe that LP+365 learning solution by Microsoft is timely and should be embraced by the Government, and other education stakeholders to move the sector to a better status.
We are reliably informed that LP+365 digital learning classroom solution is a cloud-based learning platform which transforms the Microsoft Office365 into a school’s virtual learning environment, enabling teachers to design and plan the curriculum, deliver subject material, manage coursework and communicate with learners using simple drag and drop technology.
Thus, LP+365 solution provides 24 hours access to learning for both teachers and students, virtually everything you are learning in the classroom is on line and it can be accessed anywhere you are.
The Dynamiss LP+365 offers educators and students the opportunity to access Always-On access to knowledge, Personalized learning, Better engagement, Improved communication and collaboration.
The apparatus is such an expedient measure on rethinking how to develop technology competency skills in Nigerian youths and equip them to solve real world problems. To remain relevant in today’s world demands our problem solving capabilities.
To this end, Hakeem Adeniji-Adele, public sector director, Microsoft Nigeria, enlightened attendees on the evolution in education.
According to him, “Youth Empowerment and life-long learning is core to Microsoft’s identity and we have made a huge investment in Nigeria in this area. 1.66 Million Nigerians have gone through Employability and Entrepreneurships programs in the past 1 year and 6 months; 60,000 + Youth Trained on ICT skills; 10,000 + youth Trained with Build youth Business Curriculum and 5,000 + Teachers complete train their trainer ICT training”.
These are commendable owing to the fact the “future of learning and innovation is in this room! Somewhere outside this room- or possibility, if any of you are sneakily working on your phone or tablets, somewhere inside this room- the next unimaginable, unpredictable innovation is about to arrive and transform education all over again. What we are doing here is democratizing education for the 21st century”, Adeniji-Adele said.
We count it as Microsoft is on “mission critical”: to help every person and every organization in Nigeria to achieve more.
Contrary to popular belief, using cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools slowed down experienced software developers when they were working in codebases familiar to them, rather than supercharging their work, a new study found.
AI research nonprofit METR conducted the in-depth study, on a group of seasoned developers earlier this year while they used Cursor, a popular AI coding assistant, to help them complete tasks in open-source projects they were familiar with.
Before the study, the open-source developers believed using AI would speed them up, estimating it would decrease task completion time by 24%. Even after completing the tasks with AI, the developers believed that they had decreased task times by 20%. But the study found that using AI did the opposite: it increased task completion time by 19%.
The study’s lead authors, Joel Becker and Nate Rush, said they were shocked by the results: prior to the study, Rush had written down that he expected “a 2x speed up, somewhat obviously.”
The findings challenge the belief that AI always makes expensive human engineers much more productive, a factor that has attracted substantial investment into companies selling AI products to aid software development.
AI is also expected to replace entry-level coding positions. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, recently told Axios that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs in the next one to five years.
Prior literature on productivity improvements has found significant gains: one study found using AI sped up coders by 56%, another study found developers were able to complete 26% more tasks in a given time.
But the new METR study shows that those gains don’t apply to all software development scenarios. In particular, this study showed that experienced developers intimately familiar with the quirks and requirements of large, established open source codebases experienced a slowdown.
Other studies often rely on software development benchmarks for AI, which sometimes misrepresent real-world tasks, the study’s authors said.
The slowdown stemmed from developers needing to spend time going over and correcting what the AI models suggested.
“When we watched the videos, we found that the AIs made some suggestions about their work, and the suggestions were often directionally correct, but not exactly what’s needed,” Becker said.
The authors cautioned that they do not expect the slowdown to apply in other scenarios, such as for junior engineers or engineers working in codebases they aren’t familiar with.
Still, the majority of the study’s participants, as well as the study’s authors, continue to use Cursor today.
The authors believe it is because AI makes the development experience easier, and in turn, more pleasant, akin to editing an essay instead of staring at a blank page.
“Developers have goals other than completing the task as soon as possible,” Becker said. “So they’re going with this less effortful route.”
Kaspersky GReAT (Global Research and Analysis Team) experts have discovered open-source packages that download the Quasar backdoor and a stealer designed to exfiltrate cryptocurrency. The malicious packages are intended for the Cursor AI development environment, which is based on Visual Studio Code — a tool used for AI-assisted coding.
The malicious open-source packages are extensions hosted in the Open VSX repository that claim to provide support for the Solidity programming language. However, in practice, they download and execute malicious code on users’ devices.
During an incident response, a blockchain developer from Russia reached out to Kaspersky after installing one of these fake extensions on his computer, which allowed attackers to steal approximately $500,000 worth of crypto assets.
The threat actor behind these packages managed to deceive the developer by making the malicious package rank higher than the legitimate one. The attacker achieved this by artificially inflating the malicious package’s downloads count to 54,000.
After installation, the victim gained no actual functionality from the extension. Instead, malicious ScreenConnect software was installed on the computer, granting threat actors remote access to the infected device.
Using this access, they deployed the open-source Quasar backdoor along with a stealer that collects data from browsers, email clients, and crypto wallets. With these tools, the threat actors were able to obtain the developer’s wallet seed phrases and subsequently steal cryptocurrency from the accounts.
After the malicious extension downloaded by the developer was discovered and removed from the repository, the threat actor republished it and artificially inflated its installation count to a higher number – 2 million, compared to 61,000 for the legitimate package. The extension was removed from the platform following a request from Kaspersky.
“Spotting compromised open-source packages with the naked eye is becoming increasingly difficult. Threat actors are using increasingly creative tactics to deceive potential victims, even developers who have a strong understanding of cybersecurity risks — particularly those working in the blockchain development field.
As we expect adversaries to continue targeting developers, it is recommended that even experienced IT professionals deploy dedicated security solutions to safeguard sensitive data and prevent financial losses,” commented Georgy Kucherin, Security Researcher with Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team.
The threat actor behind the attack published not only malicious Solidity extensions but also another NPM package, solsafe, which also downloads ScreenConnect. A few months earlier, three additional malicious Visual Studio Code extensions were released — solaibot, among-eth, and blankebesxstnion — all of them have already been removed from the repository.
Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has reaffirmed the Federal Government’s unwavering commitment to achieving 95% digital literacy across Nigeria by the year 2030, with an ambitious milestone of 70% by 2027.
This disclosure was made in total alignment with the present administration’s priority areas of reforming the economy for sustained inclusive growth and accelerating diversification through industrialisation, digitisation, creative arts, manufacturing, and innovation.
Making this known during a collaborative meeting hosted by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Inuwa highlighted the government’s strategic prioritisation of human capital development as central to its national transformation agenda.
“We started this journey in 2023 when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came on board and he made it clear that economic diversification and inclusivity are part of the administration’s agenda,” he noted.
“And the president outlined this in 8 priority areas to achieve the vision, with priority number 7 specifically focused on accelerating industrialisation, digitisation, creative arts, manufacturing, and innovation,” he added.
Recognising the importance of digital fluency in achieving this agenda, he stated that NITDA is committed to investing in the digital empowerment of citizens through the development of the National Digital Literacy Framework (NDLF), a strategic blueprint aligned with international best practices.
He added that to tailor the framework to Nigeria’s specific needs, 6 core competency areas were incorporated to include device and software operations, information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, content creation, safety, and problem solving.
He explained that the framework would address all levels of digital fluency, from basic, intermediate to advanced levels, to make digital skills accessible to every Nigerian, from primary school pupils to working professionals.
According to Inuwa, despite data limitations, NITDA estimates that Nigeria’s digital literacy rate currently stands at 50%, up from 44% in 2021, based on extrapolations from the World Bank’s Better Life Report.
The NITDA DG disclosed that the agency has been working closely with the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) in developing a curriculum for digital literacy, which can be infused into formal education. Stating that the visit is a continuation of NITDA’s ongoing engagements with key education stakeholders, including the Federal Ministry of Education, the National Universities Commission (NUC), and the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), all aimed at advancing digital literacy across all levels of learning.
Inuwa also revealed ongoing collaborations with global platforms such as Coursera to train teachers using AI-powered lesson generation tools and provide scalable online training.
It is worth recalling that late last year, NITDA partnered with the Nasarawa State University in collaboration with CISCO in launching the Digital Learning for NSUK (DL4NSUK) initiative to enhance digital literacy in tertiary institutions, and equipping graduates with the skills needed to be digitally proficient and globally competitive.
While stressing that the entire process, from curriculum development to classroom delivery, would require a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach, Inuwa said, “This is not a journey we can walk alone; we must bring everyone on board, education stakeholders, technology providers, state governments, and international partners.”
In response to the DG’s remarks, UBEC Executive Secretary, Hajiya Aisha Garba, confirmed that the Commission has officially received the digital literacy curriculum developed by NITDA and NERDC and has commenced internal review processes.
She acknowledged the curriculum as robust and forward-looking but stressed the need for simplification to suit early learners and teachers, citing challenges such as curriculum overload, limited teacher capacity, and inadequate infrastructure as key barriers to effective implementation.
She pledged that UBEC, in partnership with the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), will lead efforts to equip schools with computers and solar-powered infrastructure to support real learning.
“We’re committed to working with NITDA and NERDC to refine the curriculum, train teachers, and ensure effective delivery. Let us align the technical vision with grassroots realities to make a lasting impact,” she concluded.
To formalise the implementation of the meeting’s resolutions, a joint inter-agency committee was established to develop strategic plans that will ensure the effective rollout of the digital literacy initiative, to equip young Nigerians with the essential digital skills required to thrive in an increasingly dynamic and technology-driven global landscape.
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