Mr Kayode Ishola is the Strategic Lead for KidsTech Africa, an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) outfit that is into the training of young ones in ICT. In this interview with BODE ADEWUMI on behalf of the team of KidsTech Africa, he gave an insight into their successes and the reason for branching to Ibadan and many other places. Excerpts:
WHAT is KidTech all about?
KidsTech Africa is a coding system for young people between the ages of six and 15. It was launched in 2019 and it has trained about two thousand kids in about three states in Nigeria. Our aim is to bridge the gap between Africa and the rest of the world in terms of transforming the continent from consumers of technology to providers.
You said it started in 2019, can you tell us the real brains behind it?
In 2019, a team from Digprom International, which is our parent company, went to Kigali in Rwanda, when we got there, we saw that some of those kids in that place at the age of eight or thereabout in the group in which I was attached, some kids at that age were able to do things actively with ICT.
Prior to that time, I worked on a particular project with the Centre for Social Awareness, Advocacy and Ethics. It is an American/Nigerian not-for-profit organisation,I worked on a project by helping young people to learn practical computing and coding technology.
It was in Rwanda that the idea was rekindled. By the time we got back; we presented the idea to our team and we decided to make something out of it. The first set of persons we actually trained was in 2019.
In 2020, we decided to make it a mainstream, because the idea has always been toward making sure that even kids that do not have parents and who could not pay for their training can benefit from it. So, we started in Kwara state at that time by targeting two public schools and two private schools.
For the public schools, contrary to what was believed that it should be for private schools only that public school kids won’t catch up. But we realised that the kids from the public schools did well than the private schools’ kids.
We got to know that it was a result of lack of platform or opportunity to explore what were limiting them. Then we decided to scale up the programme. We created the programme to fit into different categories.
We have KidsTech for schools that want to be part of the project that can reach out to us then we’ll set it up for them and attach our trainers.
We have for individuals. It’s the one that focuses on individual parents that want their kids to be tuned into the digital grade, where they will learn coding and technology. There is KidsTech for community, which focuses on the kids in the community who cannot afford the tuition for the training.
So, we partner with community-based organisations to champion the training in form of sponsorship to be able to identify kids in the grassroots with passion for technology that can use that training to solve problems in their communities.
How would you rate the success you have recorded so far?
It’s been very impactful, especially with the last year’s exhibition we had in Ilorin. We had about twenty kids that exhibited their projects after the twelve weeks programmes they went into. These are kids that when they first came for our programme, many of them can’t even switch on the computer due to the fact that what their curriculum taught them in school was just the basic aspect of computer not practical aspect. The curriculum of the kidsTech Africa entails that you will have to work on personal and group projects, which in the eight weeks; one would have been grouped into different groups and must come up with projects.
These are projects that those kids would be the one to come up with it so they work on it together.
That one will help in collaboration, because the use of technology in the area of ICT collaboration is key. And they also have their individual projects.
We realised that each one of those kids have projects.
We have some of them that have been able to develop games animation, create stories, interactive stories. We have kids that worked on ATM simulator; we have kids that worked on CBT data-based software that moulded into questions and answers.
Those are some of those kids that had actually participated.
From the programme at the moment, they are developing a platform. There is Ibrahim, he is one of our most brilliant kids and he is currently working on a platform that will connect farmers and particularly the ones that are into animal husbandry with vertinary doctors.
According to him, the project came into existence because his dad is into animal rearing, the fishery aspect. His dad lost a lot of fishes when he was not around: the major reason was he could not get to export them in time, and he could not come on time to attend to those fishes so he lost about two to three pounds of fish.
So, he wanted to build that kind of platform that will connect farmers with experts at such periods, with a click, they would be able to reach out to experts and their location. He is a 12 year- old boy. With the support from our partner, he has started working on the project.
The programme is structured in a way that after the 12-week training, the kids would be inducted into kid tech club. The club is an exclusive club for kids that have actually demonstrated excellence and resilience in those twelve weeks, so we now pair them with our partners from Microsoft and some other areas where they have experts in the field. They mentor those kids and help them to build scalable projects.
Why the choice of Ilorin?
Majority of the developers that we started with are friends that we have been together and done a lot of things together.
Both in Lagos and Abuja, we felt that starting that kind of programme in Ilorin will give us ample time to text-run and see the effectiveness of the project, but at the end we are still going to spread our tentacles hopefully before the end of this year we would be in Lagos.
We are not in Lagos yet but we are already reaching out, same goes for Ibadan.
One of the executives of FCMB Micro Finance Bank saw the programme in which he was following and he fell in love with when he came for our exhibition and from there he facilitated a partnership between us and FCMB to sponsor 10 kids and that was how we came to Ibadan from our base.
Can you explain what you mean by coding?
Coding is the language of instruction on computer programming that is like writing, that you want computer to interpret.
Are you into other things apart from KidsTech?
We are a Tech company, we build software, apps and we are also into Artificial Intelligence and other virtual products. We also help companies in terms of technology to be able to expand their businesses.
Would you say you are satisfied with the progress you have made so far?
Yes. I would say because despite the setback we had last year with the pandemic where we shut down for almost five months, we still came back and was able to do our exhibition which we never thought that we could. The exhibition was a major project where we had viewers across the world and representatives from MIIT. The developers of scratch and other ICT organisations that monitored the programme which was also on zoom and with the comments and contributions, we knew we have done something meaningful and it helped us to expand into other states.
and then