ACI announces free robotics training for 10,000 Nigerian kids

A new campaign that provide free training on robotics for 10,000 Nigerian kids has been launched by ACI.

Speaking to Innovation Village, the head of the initiative, Olaoluwa Balogun, said the project would be carried out in 200 secondary schools across Nigeria .

“#Project10000kids is a new program we just launched at ACI where we intend to train 10,000 Nigerian kids in robotics. We want to do this in 200 secondary schools across Lagos, Ibadan, Osogbo, Akure, Ile-Ife and Abeokuta. The training would be free for all the 10,000 kids,” he said.

He added that their intention is to champion the beginning of a great paradigm in the Nigerian education system.

“We want to expose our young students to real-world engineering challenges through hands-on LEGO-based robotics projects. We want Nigerian kids to begin to think creatively and innovate like their international counterparts. It is time to start grooming our kids not just to pass WAEC and UTME. The kids would learn about basic coding concepts, algorithms and how to build simple robots using the LEGO robotics kit,” Balogun told Innovation Village.

To ensure continuity, he said they have decided to start a robotics club in each of the schools and make the schools compete on a termly basis. The first round of the competition would be in December 2015.

The project is scheduled to kick off in September 2015 through April 2016 and they have launched an indiegogo.com campaign to raise $150,000 for the project.

“You will find a comprehensive description of the project and how we intend to make it happen here.”

Balogun founded ACI in 2011 as an undergraduate at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

“At ACI, our task is to provide in-depth technology education to young Africans under the age of 30. An education that is result-centric not certificate-centric! The kind of education that will empower young people to change the world around them. Our goal is to see a great proportion of Nigerian youth become computer programmers and tech enthusiast in few years to come,” he said.

Already, ACI has trained over 2000 undergraduates at Obafemi Awolowo University and University of Ibadan in software development, robotics, graphics and animation in the last 4 years. This was done under their undergraduate boot camp called FirstStep BootCamp.