Progress Abisola
A Civil Society Organisation under the aegis of Da Hausa literacy Initiative (DHI), has expressed concerns that Nigerians working remotely were losing their jobs as a result of unstable internet connectivity.
Founder of DHI, Kaila Gumbi, who spoke recently at the 2025 first Global Power Platform Boot Camp in Abuja, noted that with the growing rate at which Nigerians were embracing technology and innovation, there was a critical need to bridge the existing infrastructural gaps.
According to her, the Boot Camp would further expose participants to how they could explore Microsoft power platform applications such as Power BI, Copilot, power automate and power pages.
“These are all Microsoft tools that help you to make your work better. These are the things that you use to enter your data and to use in the office.
“The world is all about data right now, it’s talking about how you can use the data that we are generating. So Power BI helps you to analyze this data and gives you visuals that you can use to report effectively and for power automate we are already at a stage where you don’t want to keep repeating processes that you can do easily. It helps you to automate the processes to save you time.
“Copilot helps you just like chat GPT, but it goes further because it is integrated with Excel, Word and stuff. So it’s all about making your work easier.
“There’s a lot of interest it’s just that the infrastructure is not really there. When you talk about Power BI and stuff like that, there is already a huge population that is already involved in data analytics and is working remotely, but you see there is no data, and a lot of people end up losing their remote jobs because the data is not stable.
“When I say data, I mean internet connectivity, yso there are some of these infrastructures that are not in place So it is not making it easy for Nigerians to just seamlessly adopt technology.”
Gumbi who said Nigeria s must always wait for the government to address the infrastructural deficits affecting innovations and technology added, “We have to pushforward and see what we can do for ourselves then the government will see the direction that we’re going and support. Even in this challenge, some people are making it. Some people are surviving.”
Excited Nigeria was selected as one of the 100 cities world wide to host the event, Gumbi noted that the Boot Camp would serve as a catalyst for innovation and collaboration, connecting local talent with international expertise and opening doors to global opportunities.
According to her, Da Hausa Initiative was committed to advancing data and financial literacy in Northern Nigeria, by “delivering vital educational content in Hausa the region’s dominant language, we ensure that the learning is both accessible and culturally relevant, empowering local communities, particularly youth and women, with the skills needed for informed decision-making and economic empowerment.
“Our work aligns with global sustainable development goals, emphasizing quality education and economic growth while addressing local challenges through innovative and inclusive strategies.”
Commenting on Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a necessary evil, Gumbi called for ethical use and proper control in order to ensure its not used to propagate fake news or for nefarious reasons.
Facilitator of the training, Joshua Dakim explained that participants would be educated on how they can make use of Microsoft tools for their personal productivity, to make their work easier at workplaces, and also create solutions for the community.
“We are going to be showing them how they can use a Microsoft Power platform which is actually a local tool or low code, no code, that is you don’t necessarily need to have any technical skill for you to be able to create some of those solutions, or maybe automate repetitive process.
“This platform has come to do the heavy lifting for you, all you need to do is what we call the drag and drop. Asides that, we want to teach people how they can leverage on AI, Artificial intelligence to be able to create some of those solutions.
“It’s not even every time that you have to do the drag and drop, but all you need to do is to give a prompt and then the prompt is going to help you create some of those solutions; from just giving a normal prompt to the AI, it can create application, a chatbot and so on for you.
“Basically, we want to simplify the concept and just to show people how they can be able to achieve more with less effort.”
One of the participants, Mark Sele, said he was at the training with “enormous” expectations “but basically, my expectation is to get the whole of what we have today from Microsoft.”