Meet Oyebanji Oyetunde, the brain behind Coding for the Grassroots

Oyebanji Oyetunde

Oyebanji Oyetunde

Oyebanji Oyetunde is a Product Manager and Mentor for Tech start-ups who has an interest in bridging the widening technology gap at the grassroots.

In this article, Oyetunde revealed the inspiration behind his program, titled Coding for the Grassroots.

Please read his journey to “Coding for the Grassroots” below;

Bill Gates started coding at age 13 and Mark Zuckerberg did at 8. This laid the groundwork for how they changed the world with their innovations.

Getting people into tech has been my passion since I was brought in to organize and coordinate a python class by my lecturers back when I was in school. This was due to my charisma and ability to mobilize a crowd.
The first class was not as successful as we wanted but it opened my eyes to where my strengths lie and the knowledge gap that was present in the African tech ecosystem. A lot of people including myself were not familiar with tech and the kind of opportunities that lay within.

Coding is just a layer out of numerous layers present and a group of us decided to do everything within our power to bridge the gap and get people interested in tech and provide a pathway for transforming Nigeria from a consumption nation to a production. However, we put the cart before the horse in early iterations of our plans and it took a while before we adjusted.

We would continue to hold coding hackathons in small classes in a few cities and we got our big break in 2019 when we got approached by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to take our coding evangelism into more universities.

It was during one of our hackathons that I realized that in order to get people to be more interested, we had to take the Microsoft approach of getting young people familiar with the technology first and for free. That way, it becomes a part of them like the Microsoft Office Suite. This birthed the Coding for the Grassroots idea. The goal was to make computers readily available for students in schools around Nigeria. We aimed to put a significant dent in the 42:1 ratio between students and access to a computer by donating computers to secondary schools and enrolling students in boot camps that would open their eyes to opportunities available for them within and beyond the tech space.

2020 came with the pandemic and I personally had to juggle my career and my passion. I had decided to focus on product management with a fintech start-up and I had to put a pause on the projects due to kids being out of school. This gave me ample time to review the strategy and gather more funds to bring my dreams to reality.
By late 2020, I restarted activities and swung into action in Lagos with plans to expand further into South Western Nigeria by late 2022. The outreach got into 12 community high schools in Lagos by mid-2022 and now we are going beyond Lagos and into Ogun State. I’m also looking forward to sharing my thoughts on how technology can impact agriculture at the upcoming UNDP FCMB Agrohack in collaboration with HubOne.

Giving back to humanity is one of the few ways we can ensure that more and more people get a shot at reaching their full potential and we all should do more.

Contact: [email protected].

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