By Jude Michael
Anambra State Governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo, has commenced plans to review educational curriculum in Anambra State to include coding, artificial intelligence and robotics.
The Managing Director of the Anambra State ICT Agency, Mr Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata (CFA), stated this during an event for signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU) and Bliss Team Educational Services Limited (Bredhub-UbTech), an ICT company.
Agbata, who was at the event, said the MOU was in line with Governor Soludo’s manifesto to review the educational curriculum of the state to allow students to do coding, launching, AI and robotics.
He said: ‘So it’s no coincidence that we are here today to flag off an initiative where students of COOU will have a good time with real-time Robot that is disrupting the world.
‘The university system must continue to play an important role, akin to the revolution played by Stanford University that birthed Silicon Valley, one of the top tech capitals in the world.
‘We hope that COOU will play a leading role to energize the Anambra tech drive that Mr Governor has been dreaming of.’
Earlier, the Acting Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof Kate Omenugha, said the University had been looking forward to that kind of disruptive creativity that would benefit students and staff of the University.
She said: ‘The signing of MOU for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Education makes me feel a bit fulfilled as it aligns with my administration’s desire to add academic and social bites in the institution.
‘When we came into this University, we wanted to add academic and social bites in what we are doing. This has in turn made the University a beehive of academic activities within the last seven months of my administration.
‘We drew inspiration from Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo. Two professors from the school: Prof Umedum and Prof Agofuru, have already done 13-weeks training on AI and Robotics Education in readiness for this project.
‘We have to key in to this because there are so many things we will learn. It will also be open to the outside community too, including those people consuming Mkpurummiri (hard drugs) with a view to keeping them busy and change their psyche so that they can become more productive to society.
‘Part of what we do here is community service to both our internal and external publics with a view to giving back to society.’
The Managing Director of Bredhub, Michael Ahamefula, in his speech, said: ‘You have to up your knowledge of artificial intelligence and robotics so that you can live in a society under the current 4th Industrial Revolution. We are creating industrial revolution in this part of the world; we want to produce students with real knowledge who can provide solution to society’s problems.’
The students of the institution were later given an opportunity to experience robots and also taken through lessons by experts from Bredhub-UbTech on how to programme them.
