Nigerian Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate, Obinna Ukwuani, is set to build Africa’s first STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) school in Nigeria.
His desire was revealed in a recent interview with news giant, CNN. The school will be called “Makers Academy”.
According to Obinna, Nigeria’s biggest issue presently is that the country doesn’t produce anything. “We import everything, and it comes back to education. We’re not doing a good job,” he says. He’s hoping to change that. When the school opens in Abuja (he projects this will happen in 2018 or 2019), Ukwuani is aiming for 600 students living on the Makers Academy campus.
Obinna is currently scouting around for the initial investment. Based on his business plan, he has already gotten four investors who are bringing $50,000 each.
Obinna declares that he believes in what he is doing. However he acknowledges that this is a long term investment and it could be a decade before the investors get their money back.
This is the second initiative that Obinna is undertaking with youths in Nigeria. Between 2012 to 2014, Obinna organised a robotics summer school in Lagos for high school students. The Exposure Robotics Academy taught 113 boys and girls from 17 states around Nigeria how to code and build robots.
