Yaba Silicon Valley: Makerspace, Hackerspace and Creatorspace
There has been a lot of article on the internet about Yaba being the silicon valley of Nigeria as every country in the world seems to have its own version of Silicon Valley in California, each with a slightly different variation of the name. In Nigeria, the country’s technology hub can be found in the Yaba district of Lagos. It’s nickname? Yabacon Valley.
Yaba seem to contain the highest number of co-hub working spaces, and also having the biggest institutions (Yaba College of Technology, University of Lagos and Federal College of Science and Technology), it’s also the home of many large tech companies like CCHUB, Andela, Konga, Sake Electronics.
The city was known to be the valley for only software and web developers, In December 2018, ByteHub embedded, the makers of opensource microcontroller boards in Nigeria moved into 315, Borno way, Alagomeji, Yaba so they can reach more interested electronics hobbyists and increase the hardware maker community. The relocation of this embedded hardware producing company to yaba will change the way people see and use technology, hence, it will also enable the software companies to dive into software-hardware related projects.
This hardware manufacturing company is planning to launch up their Co-Hub space by May 2019 in order to provide free mentorship programs for startups and also to introduce their embedded systems school for practical courses like Pure electronics (Analog, Digital), Mastering Microcontrollers, Robotics I and Robotics II (advanced), Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence(AI).
ByteHub Embedded has started promoting the maker movement in turning Yaba to the next silicon valley for makerspace as they launch their first meetup titled Let’s Code and Make Hardware on Tuesday, April 23rd 2019 at Facebook NG hub and also hosting the Electronics and Coding club in the Physics department, University of Lagos (Unilag). The meetup is created for developers and enthusiasts to share hacks and developments in the embedded devices, IoT technology, Robotics and automation systems. The talks typically include projects on electronics, embedded system, radio communications, internet of things and much more!
The microcontroller boards producing company is also looking forward to partner with tech companies in Yaba in building and equipping more makerspaces, so we can have more hundreds of people producing hardware products in Nigeria before the end of this year and also hosting more hackathon competitions among the makers — says the CTO of Bytehub Embedded.
The company tends to bridge the gap of turning people’s electronic ideas into reality and making every project opensource by sharing on the cloudx.ng platform where makers and hobbyists can meet and collaborate on any hardware related project.
You can also visit the Bytehub Embedded office to join and support the maker movement and promoting STEM in secondary schools and universities.