For the applicants, you could have noticed that the Lithuanian government is using real-time coding to assess Nigerians who can participate in the nation’s advertized 12-month placement opportunity. I know it is “frustrating” when they are not paying attention to your nicely formatted resume.

Lithuania, a European country, is providing a year work placement opportunity for Nigerian techies (Digital Explores) to deepen their digital skills. They match you with some leading technology companies for one year. Digital Explorers from Nigeria can choose the type of training they receive, and the company they will work in, all with a supportive and encouraging team of Nigerian and Lithuanian experts by their sides.

Look deeper – you will notice that humans are not doing the grading. Yes, they are using software to actually do the hiring, making sure that no human element shifts the fairness and competition equilibrium.

That is how modern and competitive societies work – the lesser the involvement of humans, in some activities, the better. Doing that removes biases which humans carry along in abundance.

Then imagine if the Federal Government of Nigeria can replicate that model as it looks for the best in this nation in CBN, Customs, NPA, NITDA, etc. We cannot because we are designed to be non-competitive under the federal character commission model: no matter what happens, all regions of the nation must be represented irrespective of any level of capabilities that exist regionally. Largely, competition in Nigeria is regionalized and not nationalized because under the federal character structure, you are simply competing to be the best in your region or state.

So, if you are in a class of ten participants where only three are needed for an important national assignment, and the top five participants are from one state, Nigeria will likely take the #1 from the state and then move to #6 for the second and so forth. So, the first five people are actually competing in-state and not national since the best in that state wins the slot. That is what happens in the selection of ministers where each state must have a representative even if there are more qualified people in other areas.

With that structure, there is no incentive to evolve locally and regionally because the slots are guaranteed irrespective of the preparedness into them. And to ensure such a system is maintained, competition is thrown out of the door, pushing brilliant and ambitious young Nigerians out of the nation.

For this Lithuanian program, be assured that the people that will leave Nigeria to Lithuania are people who are competent to thrive in that nation for this initiative. It motivates anyone that fails to go and work harder instead of just waiting that whether head or tail, my spots are guaranteed. With that unfortunate guarantee, incentives to improve die and the nation loses steam to compete regionally and internationally.

The message is this: continue working on your coding skills. Lithuania is looking for coders. The best test is coding test – and nothing more. If you do not make it this time, go back and work harder, and hopefully you will succeed next time. That is how nations are built.

[Apply] Lithuania Offering One Year Work Placement for Nigerian Techies

Have they figured out Manchester United’s Ole Gunnar Solskjaer? In American football, most new coaches have flashes of brilliance. Give them 10 more games and the trajectory will evolve: the yo-yo coaches will fade while the legends will emerge. The fact is this: by the time game strategists watch 10-15 tapes, they can deconstruct any manager’s strategy on the pitch.

Manchester United lost to Arsenal in Premiership last week, and just added another loss to Wolves in the FA Cup. Sure, this should not cause any panic to ManU fans. And it must not diminish the transformation that Mr. Solskjaer had engineered since he replaced the chosen one – José Mourinho. Yet, the fans and the club owners should hope that the man has deep “strategy reserves”.

The Red Devils slumped to a 2-1 loss at Wolves on Saturday night and they could have no complaints about the result after a strangely subdued showing. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s reign as Manchester United manager suffered its first irreversible setback on Saturday as a sluggish performance saw them suffer an FA Cup exit at the hands of Wolves.

By Nnamdi Odumody

In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that governments would have to take rapid, far reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society to avoid disastrous levels of global warming. The global scientific authority was unambiguous: at the current rate of warming, the planet will reach the crucial threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels as early as 2030.

The impacts which include stronger storms, more erratic weather, heat waves, floods, food shortages, rising sea levels, desertification, shrinking lakes and rivers, and large scale disruptions to migration patterns will be felt across ecosystems, communities and economies worldwide.

According to the IPCC, to ensure we maintain a 50-50 chance of limiting warming to around 1.5 degrees Celsius this century, CO2 emissions need to be lowered by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.

IKEA’s Innovation Lab Space 10 has unveiled a project ‘’SolarVille’’ which will redesign access to clean energy. Solarville is an ambitious and realizable vision for the future. It is a working prototype of a miniature neighborhood completely powered by solar energy. Built to a 1.50 scale, some households generate their own renewable energy using solar panels while others automatically purchase excess electricity directly from the producer using blockchain technology. The result is a model of a self-sufficient, community-driven microgrid system where people trade renewable and affordable energy from one another based on their individual needs.

As we went through the tour, one of the items got my brain firing. They have built this hand hair dryer that could buy the cheapest electricity using blockchain. In the dryer is a blockchain node via Internet connection which links it into an ecosystem. As you use the dryer, it would be combing the world, looking for the cheapest electricity. Once it finds, an AI bargains, and closes the deal. You would not even know. Yes, you would continue to dry your hair while the agents of bits and bytes do their jobs!

About 1.1 billion people around the world still have little or no access to electricity. It’s almost an expensive task to reach these people with centralized energy networks today as doing such is not economically optimized.  Consequently, those locked in energy poverty continue to remain in that state.

Solarville aims to solve that problem through the combination of technologies such as solar energy, micro-grids and blockchain, opening new opportunities for off-grid systems, and allowing people to leapfrog traditional grid electricity infrastructures.

The Federal Ministry of Power, Works & Housing, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, and Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trader should work out modalities which will make it convenient for embedded power providers to utilize the abundance of renewable energy in Nigeria to provide access to electricity for millions of Nigerians rather than the dependence on gas-powered Independent Power Plants which remain expensive and vulnerable to disruptions in gas production from the Niger Delta. The model of SolarVille may even work better in Nigeria since we have the abundance of solar energy in the nation.

The best time to audition for a job is when there is no advertised job.

-Ndubuisi Ekekwe

How to Get a Job in This Era