Okikiola John Oliyide, Founder of EuphratesTech and a rising name in Nigeria’s cloud engineering space, is leading a new wave of empowerment initiatives aimed at nurturing the country’s next generation of tech talent.
On April 19th, EuphratesTech will host its anticipated hackathon, a community-first event designed to promote best practices in coding and collaborative development.
But that’s just one part of the story.
Oliyide is also launching a learning grant valued at over ₦1 million to ease the entry barrier for aspiring tech professionals.
The grant will provide heavily discounted access to IT courses on platforms like Udemy and Coursera, empowering more Nigerians to transition into tech careers with confidence.
“My greatest accomplishment is still ahead,” said Oliyide.
“It’ll be the day we provide over a thousand young Nigerians with the tools, knowledge, and stipends they need to thrive in engineering and development.”
Oliyide is not just building platforms, he’s building possibilities.
As Head of Engineering at EuphratesTech, he has helped shape impactful projects like Jamajama, which digitizes Nigeria’s artisan hiring process, and Awalife, Nigeria’s first ethical lottery platform.
In parallel, he works as the Lead Cloud Engineer at Awarri Technologies, where he is helping develop the infrastructure behind Nigeria’s first LLM (Large Language Model) in Artificial Intelligence.
A graduate of the Federal University of Technology, Akure, with certifications from AWS and Terraform, Oliyide’s expertise spans fintech, e-commerce, EdTech, and AI.
When asked what inspires his journey, he said:
“We can only advance with the knowledge we share. If we don’t equip the next generation with skills and opportunities, we stunt our growth before we even begin.”
To him, challenges are simply “knowledge gaps.”
His advice to young developers?
“Fail as many times as possible, and let it never be said that you didn’t try at all.”
Oliyide believes in possibilities.
And with every line of code and community-focused initiative, he’s proving that Nigeria’s tech ecosystem can be both innovative and inclusive.
and then