6 Year-Old Nigerian Student, Damilare Akano Becomes The Youngest African Specialist For Microsoft

Damilare Akano(Middle)

Six year-old Nigerian student, Master Damilare King-David Akano has emerged Africa’s youngest Microsoft Specialist in the Certiport international certification examination organised by New Horizons Nigeria during its just concluded Summer Camp held in Lagos recently. He came tops in the Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2016 examinations with a score of 871 out of 1000 points followed by Master Toluwalese Ayoola Kwaku, a 10 years old boy who scored 825 while Master Kolawole Praise Akano, an eight year old, scored 800 points.

They alongside 200 other students participated in a month long summer camp tagged Nextgen IT Experts, organised by New Horizons Computer Learning Systems Ltd and were trained in various ICT courses like Microsoft, Multimedia, Robotics Engineering, Drone Technology, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and Coding, among others. With this performance, Damilare, a primary one student has become the youngest in Africa in 2019 to achieve this professional height, and indeed, one of the youngest in the world to achieve this feet.

The students, Damilare, Kolawole and Toluwalase are students of Scholar Crest International, Omole, Lagos among others, participated in the 2019 New Horizons summer camp across Nigeria. New Horizons, a US-based organisation with offices in 85 countries of the world is the world’s largest independent ICT training organisation. In Nigeria, New Horizons empowers over 50,000 students to success yearly in over 100 schools and 15 universities. Among the schools powered by New Horizons are Dansol, Doregoes, Vivan Fowler, Princeton, Honeyland, Phidel, Pottersland, Woodland, Startrite, Lightway, Surstart, First Age, Awesome Kids, Sunrise, Great Height, spring, Benford and NOWA Schools among others.

According to Mr. Tim Akano, MD/CEO of New Horizons, the achievement of the six-year old Damilare King-David Akano as Africa’s 2019 youngest Microsoft Certified Office Specialist, therefore, did not come as a surprise, but bears further testimony to the tradition of excellence which New Horizons is known for both in Nigeria and globally. He said in the last 14 years, the company has strived to solve one of the major problems confronting corporate Nigeria: shortage of ICT professionals.

 “Before we came to Nigeria in 2005, one of the biggest challenges facing banks and corporate Nigeria was the shortage of competent and qualified ICT personnel to manage the ICT infrastructure of organisations.  “Back then, the mobility of ICT staff was very disruptive. In one year, ICT professional would change job twice which caused a lot of disruption in the operations of organisations. But all these are a thing of the past now. “Over 75 per cent of those who work in ICT departments of corporate Nigeria today passed through New Horizons trainings either in our partnering universities or in one of our training centres across Nigeria. We are happy to have solved one problem for Nigeria,” he concluded.