On the 21st to the 22nd of November, 2023 Tech and ICT enthusiasts converged on Ado Ekiti, capital of Ekiti State, Southwest Nigeria, for the Ekiti Innovation Summit, to chart a roadmap for tech advancement in Nigeria, and indeed Africa.
Many important personalities from across the globe, very influential and strategic tech enthusiasts and startups were represented at the event at the behest of the Commissioner for Innovation, Science & Digital Economy in Ekiti State, Seun Fakuade on behalf of the Governor of Ekiti State, Mr Biodun Oyebanji.
The governor has always iterated his administration’s position on Digital Economy and how he intends to leverage on the inherent potentials. Governor Oyebanji says his administration has provided the enabling environment for tech startups to look to Ekiti State as a technological haven.
An African Silicone Valley.
But this piece is not entirely about the Innovation Summit, even though it provided the platform for three unique individuals.
The Innovation Summit provided the stage for Adebayo Favour, a 16 year old Senior Secondary School 3 student of the State Government College Ado Ekiti, to showcase his tech skills to the world. Favour during a session presented a food order website entirely created by himself, dazzling the panelists with his professional skills. Such that the Commissioner, Seun Fakuade, rose up to introduce him to the audience as one of Ekiti’s rising stars.
During the introduction, Favour is quick to recognise and offer his gratitude to the JayTee Ojo Foundation, a non governmental organization responsible for offering free tech/ICT training to students in public secondary schools across the sixteen local government areas of the state.
Favour is a beneficiary of the program, a brainchild of Otunba JayTee Ojo who started the program a few years ago out of the conviction that Ekiti’s youths can benefit from the same market as their counterparts globally. Favour also studied from one of the “Learn HTML” textbooks published by the JayTee Ojo Foundation and distributed to all secondary schools across Ekiti State free of charge.
But then Favour wouldn’t have had the requisite knowledge and professional expertise if not for the teachers who tutored him.
Teachers like Mrs Tolulope Owoseni from Harding Model College, Ado Ekiti. One of the teachers trained by the JayTee Ojo Foundation in the “HTML: TRAIN THE TRAINER” program of the foundation.
Mrs Owoseni’s case is quite unique. She won the award for Ekiti State Best Secondary School Teacher during the International Teachers’ Day held last year.
She’s presently a teacher at the Harding Model College, Okesa. In 2023, the Jaytee Ojo Foundation offered free HTML training to 20 Secondary School teachers and officials of the Ekiti State Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. Mrs Owoseni is one of those teachers.
In the video below she is seen commending the foundation for its work, passion and service at a roundtable get-together on way forward for ICT Clubs & the JayTee Ojo Foundation Programming Cup, to be held this year.
The Programming Cup was designed to ensure that Ekiti State ranked high at the 2023 Tech Cup Competition for schools in Nigeria.
Officials of the State Ministry of Education, Science and Technology who visited the Alluvium University Headquarters last year on a monitoring tour of the training met the ICT project manager of the JayTee Ojo Foundation, Mr Tunde Dahunsi, who explained that the goal of the founder, Otunba Taiwo Ojo, is to train teachers who will in turn assist the youths to become globally competitive to drive towards community self-sustenance and self-reliance through digital technology.
He said the two weeks training was aimed at training twenty secondary school teachers in six different schools in Ekiti with the aim that the teachers would go back to start ICT clubs and prepare the students for their participation in the programing core that would be organized later this year.
The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Dr. Mrs Folakemi Olomojobi, commended the foundation for it’s efforts and charged the teachers to impart the skills they would acquire during the training to the students at their different schools.
Many of the teachers commemded the foundation for what they described as an opportunity, stating that the training in HTML, coding and software development, which they were taught free of charge, would inspire them to greatness.
They were also given certificates to validate the experience and the training.
The third person is twenty year old Oluwatobiloba Faniyi, one of the ICT club trainees who graduated last year 2023 from Babatope Memorial High School, Ikoro-Ekiti, and now engaged as an Assistant Instructor training students of Florence Court International School, Atlas, Ikere Road, Ado Ekiti.
Oluwatobiloba is not a graduate, but with the training and tutelage provided by the JayTee Ojo Foundation, he is able to make an impact and an income at the same time. Basically what the JayTee Ojo Foundation HS been preaching. With the requisite knowledge of Tech/ICT, young Nigerians can indeed make a living without fleeing the country in search of the so-called greener pastures. Right out of secondary school!
The JayTee Ojo Foundation has impacted in so many lives. From providing free tutelage in ICT/Tech, to HTML for students and teachers, to providing free computers to schools, to providing boreholes supplying pipe borne water, to providing basic amenities like food, cash crops, material resources, solar street lights, to the JayTee Ojo Sports Foundation (JOSFA) where the JOSFA Queens have dazzled spectators, stakeholders and the football arena, to scholarships, the JayTee Ojo Foundation is determined to make life better for all young persons in Ekiti State and beyond.
The contributions are enormous. The foundation has touched so many lives. Kudos to Otunba JayTee Ojo and Yeye Simisola Ojo.
Two great individuals making a difference. The feats recorded by the JayTee Ojo Foundation is also replicated in Owo, Ondo State by the Aramide Ojo Foundation.
History will be kind to the Ojo family. We will have more replicates of Adebayo Favour, Mrs Tolulope Owoseni and Oluwatobiloba Faniyi, in the coming weeks, months and years. It’s just the beginning of what two people can achieve, alongside a fabulous team!