Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, has commended Airtel Nigeria for its support to local content development, saying the telecommunication is helping to power the state’s job creation drive.

The governor who was speaking yesterday at the RLG Product Discovery Day held at RLG Adulawo Technology City, an expansive technology city located along Ilesa-Akure Expressway, Osun State, said Airtel had thrown its full weight in support of local content development, establishing retail footprints across the country and boosting job creation.

“Airtel has supported a significant breakthrough for the Adulawo Technology City, supporting the provision of jobs from end-to-end – from the technicians in the Adulawo Technology City to those working in the Airtel retail pipeline,” he said.

Describing the multi-million dollar technology city initiative as a historic monument to the power of vision, the governor also revealed that the tech city had, in the last one year, provided direct employment to 150 Osun indigenes and was poised, within the next phase of its operations, to provide employment to 1,500 sales persons, who would man kiosks and other sales outposts for RLG products.

According to him, the RLG plant  are manned by graduates of the Osun Youth Empowerment Technology (OYESTECH) trained by RLG, and were the ones who assembled the beautiful products displayed by the tech company.

Thanking those in attendance, the governor stated that the Osun flagship e-learning device, Opon Imo would be manufactured from the plant to fulfill the needs of the public schools in the state after which, orders from other states will be entertained.

Also speaking at the event, the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Airtel Nigeria, Segun Ogunsanya, said Airtel believes strongly in supporting local development and in providing more opportunities for job creation.
According to him, the company has invested enormously in building a large eco-system for local content initiatives through its broad-based programmes and initiatives.

“Interestingly, the youths are the biggest beneficiaries of our local content initiatives. Only recently, we floated an initiative, Catapult-a-Startup, with the overriding idea of providing youths with a strong platform, robust funding and right partnerships to build local applications that will help transform lives, shape public service and build a better society for all of us.”

The good news is that we have seen a lot of success stories come out from this programme,” he said.

In his remarks, CEO RLG Global, Mr. Alex Lu, while acknowledging Nigeria’s population advantage and geographical size, lamented the country’s shortfall in infrastructure and industrialisation, pointing out that Nigeria’s path to economic growth lies not with what he called its “demographic bonus” but with its “talent bonus” achievable through the education of its massive population.