I want to teach Africans Programming for FREE.
TL;DR I am a software Engineer from Nigeria. Spent 7+ years studying Software Engineering in India. Got back and started teaching computer programming for a quarter of the average cost and found out a lot of people really wanted to learn but had no money to pay for it considering millions live on a $2 a day income. Now I want to make it completely FREE and still give the same quality teachings but I need your help to make it happen by getting our permanent space instead of renting for a short period like I’m currently doing. Please scroll down, I have added screenshots of testimonials of my previous students, pictures and videos from previous classes and a breakdown of how we intend to spend the money when we reach our goal and how we will continue to be self-sustainable in the long run.
This is the GoFundMe Page https://www.gofundme.com/help-african-millennials-learn-programming

It all started from a conversation with two of my cousins that came to spend two weeks with me and we were talking about something when I told them that Fred Swaniker was building the next Harvard of Africa. My shock came when one of them asked me this question — What is Harvard?
I turned to him with shock and disbelief and asked, don’t you know Harvard? He said No. I asked the older one, do you know Harvard? He also said No!
So I sat them down properly and talked to them for about 45mins. I told them about the importance of reading books and not to use the unlimited internet they were enjoying at my place to watch and follow the latest trends in American rap artists. I literally banned them from watching music videos with the internet anymore.
Four days prior to this, I started teaching them HTML (a programming language used in building websites), so that night during the “talk” I told them that I won’t have enough time to teach them since I’m working on a project and have limited time to finish coding the project so they should use YouTube to learn more instead of constantly watching music videos. I got another shock when I made this statement. They didn’t know you could watch tutorials on YouTube! So that talk again took me another 10mins telling them all the things you can watch on YouTube. I told them you could literally watch and learn anything with YouTube. An hour after the talk, they were on YouTube watching tutorials till the time I started writing this piece the next morning.
When I started teaching them HTML, they took great interest in it and told me that programming wasn’t as hard and complex as they thought it would be. This is true and mostly the fear most people tell me when I begin to teach them programming.
After the talk, I couldn’t sleep last night. I just couldn’t imagine these young guys didn’t know what Harvard was at their age — 19 and 21. This was the most basic thing to know, something must be terribly wrong somewhere. Then it hit me that this wasn’t a case for just them, it was a thing in most African millennials considering the Government has tremendously failed us time and again. So I knew I had to take serious action and do more about the situation.
This is something I’ve always known that’s why when I came back from India after staying there for 7+ years studying software engineering from some of the best Universities, the first thing I set out to do was teach web programming for a quarter of the price others were charging. It was dirt cheap on purpose!
The first class went very well. I was able to get 40 students and they have gone to do better things with their lives. I still keep in touch with them till date, we have a WhatsApp group where I still mentor and guide them to get more advanced and even in other areas like business and entrepreneurship.
I have been able to do this 4 times in the course of 9 months and it has been successful throughout. In this same time, I have had more than 400 (I have their phone numbers saved whenever I get a call or message on Facebook) people contact me showing their interest in joining my class but there was always a big problem. They couldn’t afford the fees!
At first this got me really mad that they weren’t serious. How could they possibly think a class like this could get any cheaper? I mean I was charging a quarter of the cheapest anyone else was charging. I wasn’t making any profit, I was barely breaking even and yet these ungrateful people wanted me to make it half the cost of what I was already charging?
With time I was able to see their reason mostly because as I stayed longer in Nigeria I was able to see the real situation. The country is hard!
This was my conclusion.
People live on less than $2 a day here. I have met people that had not eaten for two days but they had hope. They had the passion to learn, they wanted to do something about their situation, and they needed a real change that the Government promised them but couldn’t deliver on it. Shame!
I’ve had a grown-up guy probably in his early 30’s call me and with tears flowing halfway through the conversation telling me how he can’t feed himself because he has nothing worthy that could pay him. The country was too hard he said! I told him he shouldn’t worry, the next time we have a class, I’ll ask him to join us for FREE and he did!
A lot of people have called me like this that they want to join but can’t afford it at all. Some have called saying all they need is a discount. Some have said they don’t even have a laptop to begin with.
This has made me think of models and what I could do to make them learn this for FREE and still give them the same quality I give my paid students. I have been thinking about how to raise the money and get our own space to make this happen. The cost of getting a small space to accommodate 20 people wasn’t cheap. In Nigeria, we pay rents yearly and not monthly like other Countries. So getting a year’s rent, security, 10% agent fee and furnishing the place was very unrealistic for me.
Before now, I have been renting out spaces and paying someone that was helping me take other courses like Php and MySQL. This was why I was currently making a loss on all the 4 times I had done this. I could fund the loss and I have so far but it isn’t sustainable and I can’t keep going at it for too long if I really want to make an impact. I have a passion for this and I have been teaching computer classes since I was 16yrs old.
I can’t stress the importance of technology right now and Africa has the right demographic and youths with the passion to learn. We’re energetic and smart but we’re not being given the right environment or upliftment by our corrupt Government that squanders and loot funds at the sight of it. It’s only people like me and you that can do something about this situation that’s why I have decided to ask for fund to get our own space and teach these young people for FREE. No catch. No hidden fee. Completely free for people that really need it and are very passionate.
Now, since we can’t ask for fund every other time to keep the place running, I also thought of a way for the place to continue to fund itself.
The model is to rent out the space for a fee to people looking for space to hold their own training whenever we aren’t running our personal training. This will enable us to take care of the maintenance and pay our instructors. Maintenance here includes diesel to run the generating set since we have almost zero electricity supply in Nigeria.
This is the breakdown of the cost all in USD:
Office Space — 9,000
Furnishing (chairs, desks, projector & board) — 3000
Generating set — 1000
Instructors — 4000
Maintenance (diesel, Internet subscription, janitor etc) — 6000
Miscellaneous — 2000
More info like pictures of our previous classes can be found on our website http://lagostrainingcentre.com. You can see reviews of our previous students on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ltcnigeria or by searching for Lagos Training Centre on Facebook.
Please share and thanks in advance for donating!