This was made public during a press conference to announce a partnership between MTN Foundation and Oracle to boost ICT skills in Nigerian students.
The collaboration will see two projects come to fruition: a bursary
funded by Oracle for one student to attend the CERN Openlab Summer
School in Switzerland, and plans to train up to 2,000
MTNF scholars in database design and SQL and Java programming skills.
CERN Openlab is a
unique public-private partnership between CERN and leading ICT companies. Its
mission is to accelerate the development of cutting-edge solutions to be used
by the worldwide LHC (large hadron collider) community.
According to Alberto Di Meglio, Head
of CERN Openlab , over 1,500 applications were received all over the world and students
of the highest calibre was selected. Mufutau Akuruyejo is the only one participant
from Africa to secure a 9-week programme over the Summer, on an
Oracle-sponsored bursary.
The MTN Foundation Science and
Technology Scholarship Scheme was introduced under the Education portfolio in
the 2009/2010 academic session, aimed at assisting high performing
science-oriented Nigerian students in pursuit of their academic education in
public tertiary institutions across the county. The scholarship worth N200,000
covers tuition, book allowance and stipend.
Since inception, the scheme has awarded
over 4,900 students with the scholarship from Universities, Polytechnic and
Colleges of Education. So far, scholarships awarded are valued in excess of N994m
Founded on the 11th of May, 2005, the
Foundation is funded by up to one percent profit after tax (PAT) from MTN
Nigeria and has become the leading driver of social investments through the expenditure of over 11 billion naira
in 341 project sites across the six geopolitical zones of the country.
Mufutau, a 500 level UNILAG
undergraduate leaves for Switzerland in June.
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