‘Robot to prevent school attacks’, ‘online health service’ — NGOs train 120 children in programming

A total of 120 children, selected from charity homes, public schools and low-income private schools in Lagos and Oyo states have completed a bootcamp in programming and designs.

The training is part of a ‘Kids Innovation Programme’, organised by The Destiny Trust and Ingress for Good (I4G), both non-governmental organisations.

The two-week training featured tech-related activities, including the creation of mobile applications, as well as robotics training.

During the training period, children were engaged in a 72-hour hackathon and tasked to develop technology solutions for addressing Nigeria’s security and health challenges.

At a demo event which held on August 21, 2021, at Flourish Hall School, Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos, the children presented prototypes and computer programmes being built.

These included a mobile app to aid the rescue of kidnap victims by providing geolocation data to security operatives and relatives; a micro health insurance web service to crowdsource health insurance for the poor, and a telemedicine application to provide quick access to healthcare and reduce the burden on Nigeria’s primary health centres.

A team of children aged between 10 and 13 years also exhibited the prototype of a security robot called “Idangari”, which means “the all-seeing”.

Explaining the motivation for building the robot, the children expressed concern over the attacks on schools across the country, noting that with “Idangari”, schools get a robot that will alert security operatives, record happenings at the crime scene in real-time, and raise the alarm to prevent possible attacks.

The bootcamp also featured several mentoring sessions with professionals in Nigeria’s technology and designs ecosystem including: Princess Edo-Osagie (head, Enterprise Agile, Interswitch Group), Yinka Adewale (co-founder/CEO, Kudi), Khadija Abu (head of product, Paystack), Tosin Olaseinde (founder, Money Africa), Dara Oladapo (Microsoft MVP), Blessing Abeng (co-founder, I4G), and Wale Abba of Indicina.

Speaking on the collaboration, Blessing Abeng, co-founder of I4G, said the aim of the training is to empower children to contribute more towards sustainable development through technology.

“Tech skills have the power to change the world. While our focus is on youths, we can’t shake off the fact that every youth was once a child. We want to encourage more kids to take on STEM fields. This partnership is for the next generation of African youth in tech,” Abeng said.

In his remarks on the training, Seun Abimbola, The Destiny Trust’s education lead, explained that the concept is to offer equal opportunities to children.

“The 2021 Kids STEAM bootcamp highlights the commitment of The Destiny Trust and Ingressive For Good in ensuring the inclusion of Africa’s underrepresented children in the economy of the technology space,” he said.

“Our work of educating and empowering underrepresented children is incomplete if we don’t prepare them to thrive in the new world driven by technology.”

Ingressive For Good is a technology non-profit focused on equipping young Africans with tech skills.

The Destiny Trust provides education, care and empowerment to children within vulnerable groups, including through the Kids Innovation Hub — an initiative that equips low-income children with technology and arts skills.

So far, 445 children have been introduced to tech between 2018 and 2021, and children participate in a variety of STEAM (Science Technology Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) learning activities — including coding, robotics, design, illustration, animation and other digital arts.