In less than 24 hours from now, the first BarCamp in Nigeria will be held in Lagos, Nigeria. Since we announced BarCamp Nigeria last November, we’ve been very excited (but for the lack of updates some months ago) and as one of the sponsors of the event, we can’t wait for Saturday April 25th.

Just a quick reminder that BarCamp Nigeria will bring together technology enthusiasts, IT specialists and social media players from Nigeria and around the world together to exchange ideas, build connections, re-frame perceptions and catalyze action of realizing the potentials of Web 2.0 technology in Nigeria.

The event will be featuring two keynote speakers, namely, Justin Hartman, MD and co-founder of Afrigator and Victoria N’Dee Uwadoka, PR & Events Manager for Anglophone West Africa, Microsoft Nigeria.

BarCamp Nigeria will also be having a link up session during the event with Africa Gathering scheduled to hold in London on April 25. Africa Gathering is a day for thinkers, supporters, sponsors, doers, geeks, dreamers - and everybody else to come and share, promote, highlight, progress and evolve issues related to ICT, social networking and technology in Africa and coincidentally, it will be taking place the same day as BarCamp Nigeria ‘09.

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Update: We contacted Nairahost’s Emmanuel who emailed to say that Nairahost will release an official press statement later. We are eagerly looking forward to that.

I’m wondering how we missed the story about Nairahost appointing a Chief Executive Officer in January. But wait, didn’t they have a CEO before?

We didn’t know that Nairahost has faced a lot of problems regarding running the company smoothly, managing funny customers and financial limitations not until we saw the information posted on their blog.

Nairahost is the leading web hosting company in Nigeria founded in 2004 by Emmanuel Oluwatosin and Kayode Muyibi and two other people who we don’t know.

Nairahost recently sought for external funding (due to financial limitations, I guess) and in a deal that fetched them $500, 000 (about N85 million), according to information on their blog, they were able to appoint a CEO who’s supposed to oversea the company’s goals and visions.

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If you’ve been using Sturvs to add content on the web that you find interesting, perhaps you will like RiRanWo! Although, the site doesn’t have a voting system like Sturvs, Digg and Reddit and other social media bookmarking sites, it looks promising with great social networking features.

Note: Post has been updated

What is RiRanWo!?

RiRanWo! (pronounced Ree-Ron-Wo), is a new social media website dedicated to collecting, distributing and promoting the best Nigerian content online including Blogs, News, Videos, Music, Photos from the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog.

RiRanWo! has been built around the idea that the Internet can be more useful and maybe fun for Nigerians. But how useful is the site? RiRanWo! lets you share and store web resources just like you can StumbleUpon web contents and save them or Sturv a Nigerian news content.

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NetAfric, a web hosting company has set a daunting task to register one million subscribers in Nigeria within one year. The company recently introduced products such as web hosting, email accounts, data transfer bandwith to the business community, non-governmental organisations, professional bodies and individuals in Nigeria.

The company which is positioning itself to become one of the leading web hosting companies in Africa has started operations in Nigeria, and after attaining one million subscribers, they plan to introduce their services to other Africa countries such as Ghana, South Africa and the Gambia and Angola.

But is the one million subscriber mark really feasible? Is it a reasonable goal given the current economic recession?

While we are skeptical about NetAfric achieving this huge feat, it seems they have a definite strategy to achieve their target. NetAfrica has come up with a web hosting package that is uniquely different from other related products in the Nigeria IT market.

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United Bank for Africa, Africa’s Global Bank is pioneering a great initiative known as ‘UBA Growing Businesses’ for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Africa in partnership with EMPRETEC Nigeria Foundation. 

UBA Growing Businesses is a unique platform committed to supporting the development of Small and Medium Entreprises (SMEs) in Africa towards sustaining the generation of employment and creation of wealth. The project will empower SME’s across the African continent through access to finance, capacity and entrepreneurial skills development.

In a recent press release, the bank stated:

United Bank for Africa Plc in partnership with Empretec Nigeria Foundation; a United Nations Commission for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) affiliate based in Nigeria, will run series of training and personal entrepreneurial skills development workshops for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) operators in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.

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