A six-year-old Nigerian student, Damilare Akano, has emerged Africa’s youngest Microsoft specialist in the Certiport international certification examination organised by New Horizons Nigeria.
According to a statement on Sunday, it explained that Akano came tops in the Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2016 examinations with a score of 871 out of 1000 points followed by a 10-year-old boy, Toluwalese Kwaku, who score of 825 while Kolawole Akano, an eight-year-old, scored 800 points during just concluded New Horizon’s summer camp held in Lagos recently, Punch reports.
The three winners alongside 200 other students participated in a month-long summer camp tagged ‘Nextgen IT Experts’ organised by and were trained in various ICT courses such as Microsoft, multimedia, robotics engineering, drone technology, virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and coding.
With this performance, New Horizon said Akano, a primary one student, had become the youngest in Africa in 2019 to attain the professional height and one of the youngest in the world to achieve the feat.
The statement revealed that the students – Damilare, Kolawole and Toluwalase – are students of Scholar Crest International, Omole, Lagos.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, New Horizons, Mr Tim Akano, while celebrating the success of the winner, noted that the emergence of Akano as Africa’s 2019 youngest Microsoft-certified office specialist did not come as a surprise as it reflected a tradition of excellence which New Horizons was known for both in Nigeria and globally.
He also noted that, in the last 14 years, the company aims to solve one of the major problems confronting corporate Nigeria, shortage of ICT professionals, adding that their presence in the country has improved the ICT departments of corporate Nigeria to over 75 percent.
In Nigeria, New Horizons empowers over 50,000 pupils to success yearly in over 100 schools and 15 universities.